In Progress Laser Cut Bookmarks

Posted on by under In Progress Laser Cut Bookmarks

Laser Cut Bookmark Lesson Plan-1v44gi0

 

My final project is a lesson on laser cutting and how to use a free digital drawing program called Inkscape. Using these the students will be assigned to make a bookmark. The lesson will be in collaboration with their english teacher and will encourage the students to realize the connection between art making and literature.

I started by making the designs on my Ipad. Students will have the choice of drawing directly in the Inkscape program, using an Ipad if they have one or any other digital drawing tool or they can draw it on paper and scan it.

Then I brought the designs into Inkscape to vectorize them and image trace, the same way that we did in illustrator, although the file did not work with the laser cutter in the DFL. I will have to look deeper into it if i use Inkscape in the lesson plan because to get them to print i had to bring them into illustrator to export it in a way that the laser cutter could read it.

INKSCAPE

ILLUSTRATOR

 

Here are the final designs that I came up with

Maker Day

Posted on by under Maker Day!
  1. What moments stand out?  When did a child surprise you, by doing something unexpected?

 

One girl came ready with characters ready to go and a story she wanted to make. It was so exciting and rewarding to see her so excited, ready to make her characters that she spent so much time on come to life

 

  1. What did you observe about the interactions between the children and their adults?

Overall, the parents were supportive of their children and let them do what they imagine. But there were more than one instances where a parent would get very involved in what I would consider a negative way, telling their child “no, he shouldn’t do that, he should do this” and then proceed to move the character themselves. One time in particular a child wanted to make their character to disappear because he was magic and the mother said “no he isn’t, make him walk like a normal person.”

 

  1. What worked particularly well?

I think our decision to make different stations for character design, story and filming worked really well. It kept the day moving and gave the children waiting to film something to do and engage themselves in the different material.

 

  1. What might you do differently next time?

Next time I think I would not play the loop of animations on the smart board. I found that for some of the younger kids they would get very distracted while filming and kind of blankly stare at the screen in awe of the videos. Which is great of course, but maybe not when there are kids lining up behind you ready to film.

  1. How well did your group function?  What worked and what might have been frustrating in the collaborative process?

 

I think our group worked really well together. There were times where I felt like I personally was getting a little too controlling but whenever I realized I was maybe taking charge a little too much I would take a step back.

 

  1. How satisfied are you with your own participation in your Maker Day Group?  What did you contribute? What might you do differently next time around, in terms of the group process?

 

I am very satisfied with my contributions to Maker Day. I am really glad that when I suggested we do Claymation it was approved because it wasn’t really anything that we have done in class but I knew it would be something that the kids and even the people in the group would love. I think that the work was spread very evenly, we all came up with ideas and we all brought those ideas to life, whether that be the fliers, the backdrops, the handouts, everything was very collaborative.

 

 

  1. Please add any other reflections or feedback on Maker Day.

 

Maker Day was a great experience for me personally. Working with the kids and helping them create something that they are proud of was truly an exciting and rewarding thing. I think this is something that I will look back on for a long time. I’ll look back at their videos and smile for sure. I think that even though it got crazy in our room, the amount of people was good and very manageable.

 

 

 

http://hawksites.newpaltz.edu/makerdaystopmotion/

Maker Day Videos

Lantern Project

Posted on by under Lantern Project

When I was told we were going to be using Arduino again, I was thrilled. NOT

I’m just not a coding, technical type of person. Things frustrate me more than I would like them to.

Even though the idea of making another circuit and coding more lights was very intimidating and not very exciting to me, I was excited to use the laser cutter and start making some original illustrations.

I chose to illustrate a poem that I wrote a couple years ago.

It’s called LadyBug and it reads:

 

The world is no place for a lady bug

they will tell you

She’s too small

Too fragile

Her wings can easily unfold

And the wind will take her

She’s helpless

They will tell you

The world is no place for a lady bug

Her red will stand out

And make her too vulnerable

Man will surely stop her

Because the world as we know

Is no place for a lady bug

though

She will try and try to make her way

Out

But no man is kind enough

To open the window

She dies silently

In the window sill

 

And on that happy note!

I broke the poem into four parts and illustrated them, these were the images that I came up with.

Over time the design changed to fit the needs of the project and limits and logic of the laser cutter and the way that it works; the design process in action!

I drew my designs digitally on my ipad using the app procreate, but that app doesnt use Vector, witch means that the image resolution was not perfect and could not be blown up or shrunk down without losing it’s quality.

So I had to take the drawings into illustrator where they can become vector documents, along with doing a bunch of other steps that we did to let the laser cutter know what we wanted.

This is what that looked like

After everything was put in the correct layer, and the right size, it was time to go to the digital fabrication lab where the design would be cut into the wood that would be put together and become my lantern.

It was so interesting to watch this happen in person, technology can be cool sometimes, I guess.

Now it was time for Arduino….

I programed the lights to flicker in a way that it would kinda imitate a candle to enhance the lantern persona.

Making the circuit was by far the most difficult thing that I had to do for this project. It gave me such a hard time, I was so frustrated and I let my frustration get the best of me more than once.

In the end I got the completed the circuit

For this project I think limitations were necessary, and I wish I understood them more and did a significantly less difficult design. I think that with art or really anything creative in life there is an important balance between freedom and necessary limitations. I think that the guidelines for the laser cutter created challenging limitations but it also taught me valuable lessons about thinking inadvertently and outside of the box.

 

Arduino Project

Posted on by under Arduino Project

When we first were introduced to coding I was certainly overwhelmed and felt like I was calling over my professor every other minute and desperately making eye contact with the other struggling students near me

 

We stared by reading though the blogpost “Getting started with Arduino” from there we got together all the tools we need to program the ATtiny

The tools we used included:

Tiny AVR Programmer

ATtiny

A Breadboard

Cables

And the Arduino program

The ATtiny is connected to the Tiny AVR Programmer and then the programmer is connected to the breadboard through the wires.

I know, it’s a lot…

With all of these foreign tools in front of you, you kinda just….

Now it’s time to code and program the ATtiny! Woohoo!

We started by simply copying the example on the Blogpost, it looked like this:

int blinkPin = 0;

void setup()
{
pinMode(blinkPin, OUTPUT);
}

void loop()
{
digitalWrite(blinkPin, HIGH);
delay(500);
digitalWrite(blinkPin, LOW);
delay(500);
}

From there, we added lines of code and changed the delay number, that changed the speed of the light blinking. This is what it looks like on the computer screen.

We then added more “pinmode’s” that correlated to where the wire was pluged into the AVR Programmer, those were then connected to the lights on the breadboard, making them blink

Here is my final code:

int blinkPin = 0;
void setup()
{
  pinMode(blinkPin, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(3, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(4, OUTPUT);
}
void loop()
{
  digitalWrite(blinkPin, HIGH);
  delay(143);
  digitalWrite(3, HIGH);
  delay(100);
  digitalWrite(blinkPin, LOW);
  delay(55);
  digitalWrite(4, LOW);
  delay(46);
  digitalWrite(3, HIGH);
  delay(55);
  digitalWrite(blinkPin, HIGH);
  delay(143);
  digitalWrite(4, HIGH);
  delay(100);
  digitalWrite(blinkPin, LOW);
  delay(55);
  digitalWrite(3, LOW);
  delay(46);
  digitalWrite(4, HIGH);
  delay(43);
}
Don’t worry, that still doesn’t mean anything to me, I randomly changed the numbers until I liked what it did…

but, it ended up being pretty cool!

IMG_0644-1cad3xi – Video

So the point of all this wasn’t just to type a bunch of numbers in a program and call it a day, if you remember it was to program this little thing:

Those little legs correlate to the numbers that were in the code based on where the wires were plugged in.

 

 

I KNOW IT’S CONFUSING

I’m not even sure what I’m saying.

Anyway now with that little thing programmed you are able to make a circuit with lights that blink in the way that you programmed them to, yay!

Now it was time to decided what you wanted to do and what you wanted to express using light.

I decided to use a photograph of my little sister that I took about a year ago.

This is the photo:

When I think about my sister I think about all of the possibilities that she has for her future and how bright of a person she is. I wanted to express that through this photo of her looking up.

metaphorically and physically

I decided to place three lights that arch over her head

This is what the back looked like

Oh and of course I burnt myself again soldering, worse this time.

oh well

 

Here is the finished product!

 

 

This project was similar to the circuit card in the senes that it was a circuit and we used light to create meaning, but different because of the more complex preparation with Arduino and the new equipment.

How did your process reflect (or not) design thinking? During the coding process, there was a lot of “okay this didn’t work” “what can I do to fix this” ect. connecting a lot of the thinking to the way that design thinking is structures
What did you learn? Through all of those steps I described I learned first how to program, which is very interesting and now I can add (a little) to the conversation when my boyfriend, the electrical and computer engineer and computer science major starts going off on tangents about codes and stuff..
What was most challenging?  Connecting the wires to the board was very difficult before I got the hang of it.

What was most fun? Playing around with the code was probably the most fun I had.


How might you use and/or adapt this activity in an art classroom? I think this would be something very interesting to do in an art classroom to get students thinking about art in a different way, having them use light and the way the light blinks to create more meaning for a piece of their art work.

Circuit Card

Posted on by under Circuit Card

In class we learned how to make a simple circuit with copper tape and a battery. Using these two pretty simple materials we were able to get a small LED light to turn on.

We had a day of testing out ideas with various materials, figuring out what worked and what didn’t. And then our actual assignment was to create a card for someone that means a lot to us and of course I picked my boyfriend, Danny…

It’s kinda funny because my boyfriend is going to school for electrical engineering, so this simple circuit is soooo simple to him, but he will probably appreciate in on another level, that i am just tapping the surface of what he does in a much deeper way.

I started by making a holder for the battery so that it could be easily replaced, if needed.

 

I hid my holder underneath a layer of tissue paper

I started by thinking about different things that make me and Danny’s relationship special, little things that make our relationship unique.

I thought about the colors that the two of us use, blue and green. My favorite color is blue and his is green, so he sends me blue things and I send him green. So based on that, I incorporated those colors into the card as well as using an LED of each color.

 

I used two aluminum foil hearts to complete the circuit.

One of the requirements of the card was to have a switch that completes the circuit:

I then customized the card more, we always say that forever is never enough, so we say, “forever and a day”

I know, super gross and lovey.

I then had to solder the joints and LEDS down to make them more secure and……

I burnt myself..

on my pinky ):

but it felt okay by the end of the day.
I created the card in a way that could work as a small photo album

Simple circuits can add a lot of meaning to something because the green and blue LED lights add so much more meaning that is unique and individual to our relationship.

Here is a full flip through video

IMG_3983.TRIM-2563fc4 IMG_0077-2k9mrh1

 

Moving Pictures

Posted on by under Moving Pictures

This moving project taught me a lot. It was extremely frustrating to go through this continuous cycle of “this doesn’t work” and “wait it isn’t working”..”why??!”

It is extremely annoying and I was not having the best day already so I was not in the mood for the design thinking cycle, but the design thinking cycle was in the mood for me, let me tell you.

My group and I just got started my making the motor. We knew how to do this already because of the drawing bot activity.

It was pretty easy to get the motor going because it wasn’t anything knew to us, but we did want to figure out a different way to get the pictures to move than just doing exactly what we did last time.

We started experimenting with the idea of getting the pictures to move by creating a fan effect on the motor.

We couldn’t get the motor working in a way that gave enough blowing air. I experimented by making fan shaped “propellers”

It didn’t work.

I was upset to say the least.

That was the first cycle of design thinking, it was a lot of imagining and thinking and creating and breaking down and then recreating, because it seemed as though nothing would work.

Moving forward we had the idea of really focusing on the “story” we wanted to tell with our photos because if we couldn’t come up with something super technically interesting, then we might as well make it nice to look at.

We began cutting out different images that had the same kinda “feel”. We wanted to tell a story of forest or “creepy” scene where a scared cat is running through this place.

We put the pictures together on a single sheet of interestingly colored paper and made an arch in hopes it would make the images shake in a more interesting way.

We liked the story we came up with, but not the way it was looking.

We tried the fan again for the heck of it….

 

Another cycle gone through

We changed the placement of the glue stick and it made an interesting vibration, it moved the images so quickly that it make the cats legs look like they’re moving. It was pretty cool, so we played upon that.

Another cycle…

We redid the way we presented the photos, adding more pictures and changed the orientation so it would make a little more sense to the viewer.

It was finally starting to work out the way we had wanted.

I learned to be patient with the project at hand and go with the flow, there is a cycle for a reason. It’s meant to be gone through more than once.

 

 

Drawing Bot

Posted on by under Drawing Bot

This Drawing Bot project was the first time using these new materials.

It was a little intimidating, but it wasn’t anything my partner and I couldn’t handle.

First, we put together the bot itself,

We put the markers onto the crate, the same way the parkers were put on the cup in the demo, we weren’t ready to explore beyond the basics too much.

After some trial and error, as well as going through the design thinking cycle a few times, we were able to get our bot going!

Once we got the technical side done of getting it to work, it was time to make some creative and aesthetic choices, although we didn’t get full control of this choice. We were given the prompt “mischievous”

using this prompt we had to make our bot move, look and or sound “mischievous” and we had to convince the class.

Right off the bat we decided to use reds and grays for our bot because it would give that feeling of mischief.

We used red burlap and red and black pipe cleaners as a way to further express our word

working with these materials, the markers, tape, pipe cleaners, ect. really brought me back to my younger art years, connecting me to my prior knowledge of arts an crafts.

The hardest part would have to be when we were deciding how to make our piece come off as mischievous. We used music and a drawing on the top of the bot to make it more convincing.

 

 

Overall, the project was a lot of fun, and definitely would be a great project to help children learn more about design thinking.

Electric Origami

Posted on by under Electric Origami

  • At the beginning of class when I found out we were going to be working with paper doing origami, I was nervous enough. Working with paper has always been a struggle and following directions while trying to create something simple like a flower is more difficult than you would think.

    One second your paper is folded in half like a hot dog and the next step says something simple like “fold it the opposite way and turn it inside out”.

    It seems easy enough when they do that step it looks like this:

     

    But then you try and it looks like this:

     

    so, in short; origami is hard. And if origami alone wasn’t hard enough, we had to put a light on it…what? a light? on paper? I was confused at first, but then recalled how we used a battery to turn on little tiny LED lights.

    My partner and I got started by looking up different videos of origami tutorials. We picked a simple flower, simple

    We had to rewatch the steps over and over again, trying to figure out his movements and folds. During this process I learned that following directions is easier said then done. Watching his hands on the screen and following along was very difficult, but after getting something correct, it was very satisfying and once we got the hang of it, it was actually kinda fun.

    I could definitely see myself as a future educator using this project in the future. It makes use of two sides of the brain. Creativity in creating the origami itself, but also technically designing the project in a way that will light up, as well as stand up on it’s own.

    Here was our end result:

     

    The process was interesting and very much a trail and error process, connecting this project to the others we have done that are very much focused around a cycle and design thinking.

    “Tearing the paper means you’ve stopped believing in the infinite possibilities of a square.” 
    ― Tor Udall, A Thousand Paper Birds

Marble Run

Posted on by under Marble Run

Building a self supporting structure out of random materials in a classroom is harder than you might think it would be. Just figuring out the way that materials work together and stand are tough enough and you feel like every time you do something the entire thing is going to fall down and you’re left kinda feeling like this:

anyway,

The assignment was to create a track for a marble to travel through. You would get extra points by doing certain things like, height, amount of turns, creativity, length of the travel time, ext…

 

We were put into small groups and were told we could use the materials around the room, whatever we wanted. My group and I went for the cardboard and other strong materials.

 

     

 

I had done something like this in the past so I knew the importance of having a strong foundation was, as well as an overall stable construction because it was important that every time we tested it, the marble would make its way through the entire course, it was part of the scoring process.

We began by using right shaped pieces of cardboard and built up the base of the project.

The entire process was all about trial and error, figuring out what works and what doesn’t, a lot like the Design Process that we learned about in class.

The project reflects this idea of “design theory” because when designing you are constantly going through these moments where you have to evaluate, find the problem, figure out how to fix that problem and then actually do it, and then do it all over again.

 

During this process we came to a lot of points where we needed to fix a problem, without even knowing it we went through this cycle of “ask, imagine, build, evaluate and share”

 

 

This project was a lot like glitch art in the sense that we didn’t know exactly what we were doing when we did it. For example when editing the text file for glitch art we were unsure of the outcome and when we were taping all fo this cardboard together and making a path for the marble to go down, we had no idea if it would work, if that marble would go the way we planned or not at all. It is a lot of trial and error in both projects.

 

 

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