At first this project allotted me much more creative freedom than any of our past projects because I was familiar with both Adobe Illustrator and laser cutting with the Digital Fabrication Lab. Learning more about the ways I can utilize the resources at our school such as the D.F.L. was my favorite part of this project. The perimeter of creating something as a set of four allowed me a good amount of room for invention
but also grounded my thinking process. However, once we began working with the Arduino, I found myself facing new challenges and having to fill certain requirements that didn’t necessarily enhance the aesthetics of my lantern. Though, I was pleased to see that everything I learned from the past Arduino project stuck and was easily applied the coding and wiring of the breadboard. This is a great example of the cyclical path of knowledge seen in design thinking. The most difficult part of this project for me was the general physical construction including working with the wires, soldering, adding lights, hot gluing, taping, etcetera. It was a bit frustrating for me personally because I had minimal class time to work through the assemblage but
ample time to work on my illustrator design which I needed less assistance with. Overall it was nice to utilize past skills from graphic design and knowledge from art history for a new project, and I’m quite happy with the final result. In a classroom setting I would use this project to incorporate an art history lesson for high school students similar to the way I went about my project. Students could pick portraits or landscapes from a specific time in history, draw (modernize) them using illustrator, have them laser cut, and present to the class about the object’s history and their personal process. I would either not include the Arduino or have my students code one light for simplicity sake.
November 16, 2018 at 4:58 pm
When you talked about utilizing the resources in our school such as the DFL it reminded me of just how many amazing things we can do with the tools on campus. I really need to start taking advantage of more things before I graduate! Your designs are absolutely incredible, I wish I had more knowledge of illustrator so I could do the embossing like you did! Even though the arduino aspect of this project was the most difficult part, I think seeing it light up in the end makes all the hours of struggle worth it. Also, I wanted to thank you for letting me help out on your piece. 🙂
November 19, 2018 at 4:14 pm
CAN I BE YOU? you’re actually perfect and made a beautiful work of art that shines bright. I absolutely love your idea to do greek goddesses, they’re so elegant and your etching is so impressive. Your simple code for the lighting pattern worked really well. I think that if it was a crazy pattern then it would have taken away from the elegant feeling the design already had.
December 4, 2018 at 7:48 pm
I agree with what you are saying about how this project had enough freedom for invention and expression but also enough perimeters to ground our thinking process. I love how you combined the cutout elements with the engraving so create such beautiful work.
December 8, 2018 at 7:06 pm
Your lantern was so beautifully done! I loved that you chose to illustrate the greek goddesses ~ Your attention to detail to treat the figures with more delicate imprinted lines combined with their surroundings as more graphic and cut out shapes works really nicely. I think that if the figures themselves had been cut out as well, then the lights would have over powered them and taken the attention away from your drawings. You planned everything out so well. I also love how consistent all of your designs are. Consistency in drawing and design can actually be pretty challenging, so I love that as you turn your lantern, all sides feel like they are consecutive and working together – Like they all belong to the same world. Very nice work!