Where's Waldo? Try Using Google Earth Artist Melanie Coles loved looking for the stripe-shirted character in the children's book series Where's Waldo?. Coles recently made a giant Waldo, placed him on a roof in Vancouver and is waiting for Google Earth to find him.

Where's Waldo? Try Using Google Earth

Where's Waldo? Try Using Google Earth

  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/89677916/89678766" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

As a child, Melanie Coles spent hours poring over Where's Waldo? books, looking for the stripe-shirted hero.

Now a 22-year-old artist, Coles thinks people these days could spend hours poring over Google Earth images looking for things. Why not give them a Waldo to find? She recently made a 2,300-square-foot Waldo and put him on a roof in Vancouver. Now she's waiting for Google Earth satellites to pick him up.

Coles says it took 15 friends a couple of days to get their Waldo ready.

"I always wanted to work with Waldo," she says. "The whole point of his books is that you've won some sort of contest when you find him, or you've achieved something when you find him. So I think that that excitement is embedded within his image, and that sense of achievement is embedded within his image."

On our blog, an open thread: Seen Waldo yet?