Make your own Nintendo Labo ToyCon Guitar with our step-by-step guide
Not safe for use
Come one, come all, gather round for today I have put the extensive cardboard skills I've gained from the Nintendo Labo Variety Kit and ToyCon Garage to construct, for you, a most excellent ToyCon you can make at home from scratch.
You'll need some materials, and some parental supervision, and a keen eye for cutting up and folding cardboard.
Do I recommend you do this? Frankly, no, as I, as a 26 year old fully grown adult, have made a right pig's ear out of the whole thing.
A quick disclaimer: if your ToyCon Guitar turns out worse than mine then I apologise profusely but honestly I have no idea how you messed up worse than I did, for real. And if yours is better? Pfft, what do you want, a medal? Show off.
You'll need the following materials:
- A lot of cardboard
- Tape
- A marker pen
- More tape
- Nintendo Labo ToyCon Garage
- Stock up on tape
- Scissors
- Extra cardboard
- The Nintendo Labo JoyCon Holder (or make a second)
- Stickers or something to decorate
Right, so as I was saying, let's get a big piece of cardboard.
That's too much. Let's cut a bit off.
Nice. The first thing we want to do is make a dock of sorts for the Switch so it doesn't fall off straight away. Place your Switch down on the cardboard and roughly trace around it. From there leave at least half an inch on each side and then cut around it.
You can use the extra half an inch to fold up the sides, creating a wee holster for your Switch, as you can see below. How do we hold those folded sides together, you ask? Tape. I'm using masking tape here, which despite my earlier self-assurances, isn't really strong enough. So use something better.
Get an extra strip of cardboard at least an inch in width, and five inches in length. Fold a space in it which is just over an inch, so the card is slightly raised. This will become a latch to hold our Switch in place. Take a look at this pic for reference. Note: tape.
Grab a longer strip of cardboard just wide enough to fit in the gap, and tape that to the back, as if it were exiting the gap we've made. Make sure it folds all the way around the Switch and into the gap, then tape the bit on the back in place, so the rest of it is still free to move.
That's basically the dock made, right, so now we're going to move on to the body of the guitar.
Let's get a big piece of cardboard out again, and trace the shape of our dock, including a rough trace of where our latch sticks out.
Make sure the neck of the guitar is at least the thickness of the JoyCon holder all the way up, so we can attach it later.
You can design whatever kind of pattern you want. I recommend a better one than mine.
Cut away the square for the latch and cut into the cardboard slightly, so the latch can slot into the body of the guitar itself. Done correctly, they should hold together, although very weakly.
The solution? I would recommend tape.
Right, now that's all in place, let's slot the Switch in. Don't expect this to be, err, perfect, and certainly be very careful not to drop your Switch, but… Yeah… This works?
Now we'll put the JoyCon Holder on the neck of the guitar, with the opening of the holder facing the neck of the guitar, not the body. Tape that sucker in place.
Right, we basically have a guitar, right? Right! Okay, let's make a guitar.
The basic guitar is very simple to make. You want six long "touch boxes" and six note boxes. This is quite simple to put together. For more info on ToyCon Garage, take a look at this guide.
From top to bottom, here are the notes you want to use, all using the Guitar 1 sound effect.
- E (Octave -1)
- A (Octave -1)
- D (Octave 0)
- G (Octave 0)
- B (Octave 0)
- E (Octave 1)
Actually implementing use of the JoyCon into the instrument is actually a little more complicated but can be performed by using the "AND" function in conjunction with JoyCon button presses and frequency changing.
Alternatively, instead of setting your strings to play when the screen is touched, you can set the to play when you shake your other JoyCon, to add to the effect.
Now that's in place, it's time to decorate our instrument. I just used my marker and some stickers I had lying around, but popping out to get some supplies isn't the worst idea.
Once you're stickered up you're not just cool, you're Harry Slater cool. And that's ice cold.
Congratulations, if you've followed all the steps up to this point, you will have successfully crafted a ToyCon Guitar.
Let's take a look at some glamour shots…
I'm really sorry.