Monday, September 15, 2008
Constructing the wizard tower

A total of 3 weeks was taken to build a tower that stands at 2.2m. On top of the rest of the assignments,we were to discuss on the tower selected, generating 3 panels, build a prototype and build the actual tower. It was group work.

Initially, our tower selection ranged between Ravenclaw and Slytherin. Mine was for Ravenclaw, portraying a eagle hugging over the inner tower, hence coming out with the concept of "a tower within another tower" (Credits goes to Pastor for inspiring me with this idea). While my group members had their own ideas of what our tower should be, we have finally settled on working with Slytherin, working on my idea of the concept.

When that was settled, churning out 3 different designs for the tower was little difficulty. We allocated each other with job scopes. One of us were to do a panel each and a exploration of the model. Out of the 4 of us, the 1 guy would do our final decision of the tower. Sadly, none of the panels were up to standard for that day's presentation, and I have to admit that it was slightly sloppy and disorganised. The good thing was that we had an ingenious idea of how the tower should look like after the presentation. Credit goes to Farah for constructing a pop out tower with neat folds and joints. It had the gothic and authorative look suitable for the tower. There were other issues at hand, such as how the outer tower should be constructed, and that caused disagreements between the group. On one side of the table, there was talk about how flaps and a straight inner tower should be constructed so as to show the authorative figure of the tower. On the other hand, I was thinking of creating a spiral twirl up to the top of the tower, so as to break the angular shape of the tower and to promote the use of paper.

Although the situation wasn't resolved on the spot, construction of the inner tower began on Wednesday. KC and I spent roughtly about the whole day forming a super big piece of paper. We found most of these paper as scrap paper from Scalebar, the printing shop in SDE. After spray-gluing the papers together, we started measuring the dimensions of the inner tower. One of the problems we faced is the angular shape of the inner tower, and the slanted edge of the tower such that it looked like a pyramid from the Andes. We resolved that easily by folding the paper inside, such that we can achieved a nice smooth line. By the end of the day, we were able to probe it up, such that it was standing by itself. That by itself took a whole lot of effort constructing, studying the nature of the paper, and the pyramid was an achievement.

No work was done for the outer tower though, as the design for the tower was not finalised. This was delayed till Sunday when action finally took place. Sadly, there was little which I could do to help the situation on the weekend. People have their lives and commitment. We just have to make do with the circumstances.

I managed to come back to the studio at 8pm that Sunday night. Things didnt look too good. Apparently, the inner tower had flopped into a deflated piece of paper. What that looked like the construction of the outer tower looked like a wrecked car from an accident. Team members remain demoralised at this point of time, wondering how they could reconstruct the flaps. (In the end, the flaps idea was selected.) What that needed attention was the strengthening of the inner tower. Thank God I had some background in construction due to my involvement in Scouts. In about an hour, I was able to reconstructed a pioneering structure of what we used back in NPC, in a scaled down size. Satisfied with how firm the inner structure stand, we fitted the initial inner tower around the skeleton structure, almost like as if we were adding skin to our tower. With that, the inner tower was completed.

There was another round of discussion on how the flaps can be reconstructed. It was close to impossible for such a construction to be done on a big scale. When all things became desperate, we finally used the "spiral" concept. It isn't really a spiral as there wasnt a continuous chain twirling around the tower. It resembled more of chains, and in a certain way, scales of a snake. Tedious planning, measuring, drawing of circles and cutting was done to the new template. When it was up, however, there were some inaccuracies in the measurement. And since it was 4am, there was no way to redo the piece again.

Sometimes, I feel that more time should have been invested on the execution aspect. Although planning itself is important, if one is unable to understand the nature of the paper and how it would affect the outcome, the design by itself is a failure.

With 2 hours of sleep, we had our crit session with our teacher. While the rest of the group had been commented for their designs and purpose, ours was perhaps heavily criticised for its accuracies and worksmanship. It was pretty sad to see this happening before my eyes. It was afterall a very good concept which no one had ever thought of. However, due to the input of many different ideas, and the lack of foresight, it was not executed to its perfection. The end result was a shoddy piece of work.

I would regard this exercise as a failure. But it is from this failure that lessons can drawn out of this.
1. There must be an ample amount of effort on the execution phase. This is so as to be able to react to unforeseen circumstances that may not be seen during the planning phase, whereby necessary action can take place.
2. There should be a project leader in anything which we do. When 2 people give conflicting ideas of how a design should look, the design itself will lose its efficiency. However, the project leader should also accept feedback from the group members.
3. There should be constructive feedback. This means it should not be a personal attack on the design, but an improvement or a fault to the design aspect.
4. Fighting for your ideas means putting in effort in putting forth what you want to show. Whether if it is to show your idea through a model, or suggesting the change of idea at the right time, if you feel strongly for an idea, knowing that it would work under constrains, then its worth fighting for.

I would glady redo my tower again if given a chance. Sometimes, when things dont go according to plan, you fall from the experience, and you learn how to pick yourself up again.

Labels: Industrial Design

Thursday, August 28, 2008
The start of a very epic battle

The time was 9.15pm. The estimated time to complete my 2nd assignment was by 4am. There should have been nothing but chionging through the assignment.. The assignment was to use a basic shape to create a rhythm (a string of basic shapes which shows motions), deformation (to create other shapes from the basic shape by twisting the contours of the shape) and a pattern (using both basic shape and deformation)

I managed to finish it only by 9.30am the next morning. Spending a whooping 7 hours on the patterns, it was my pride and joy that it managed to turn out looking very nice. The rhythms took slightly shorter.. about 4 hours and the deformation, 1 hour with a bit of dozing off from the lack of sleep.

It was super tedious, and careful execution was carried to ensure minimal damage to the workpiece. Unlike soft copy, one wrong move on the actual piece and you can end up throwing the whole piece away.

When it is finally done, i cycled back to bunk by 10am. Took a quick shower and hit the bed. Spent about 2 hours of sleep, and up I was for the Critique session at 2pm. All I remembered was the pounding headache and how it sucks to have so little sleep.

The critique went smoothly. Most of us had interesting rhythms and patterns. Out of the whole lot, mine was one of the last few. Interestingly, the last few were labelled as the "Extremist club", probably because of the daring approach to defining what are patterns. Overall, I didnt really do a good job with the deformation and the rhythms unlike my other classmate. I was however, encouraged by the remark one of the tutors.

"This is the best pattern I have ever seen."

Labels: Industrial Design

Wednesday, August 27, 2008
When You're Stressed from all the work...

Labels: Industrial Design

Monday, August 25, 2008
My very 1st Assignment!!!

Extracted from my preparation for this exercise

In the square world, everything is made out of squares. Anything that is not a square is also morphed into a 4 equal sided right angle polygon. It was on one of those days that I decided to bring some food from Earth. Gathering my 5 newfound friends from Square world, we had a picnic by the park in Square world.

In Square world, no one has ever seen fast food before. It was a creation that was ingenious only on Earth. So when I brought fast food into the Square world, they were very intrigued by its colour and appearance. Apparently, the Squares have never seen “red” in their entire life, while they could only comprehend “yellow” through the setting square sun. Perhaps red and yellow were so much of an opposite in their world that the colours simply couldn’t exist. (perhaps the reason why the sun remains in square world is due to the fact that there should only be one sun in the solar system, and that sun happened to be yellow). It was such a pity that the Squares have never fully appreciated the use of red and yellow. On Earth, these colours are associated with high branding value. Countless of companies other than the fast food chains have made use of red and yellow, such as Coca Cola, Vodafone, Ferrari, Shell and even DBS. Companies make use of these bright colours and its shorter wavelength to create a closer distance perception, hence attracting the attention of the customers. Perhaps that is the reason why Mac-Donald is able to earn higher revenue comparing with duller colour fast-food chains.

Even though there are 3 dishes brought over to Square world, fast foods come as a set meal (usually a burger, a side and a drink), and with the use of a few common colours among the fast food, there was sufficient for the 6 of us, each mysteriously having food for our own.

Intuitively, the Squares chose their choice of fast-food with accurate resemblances to their character. Each of them had a behavior that suited their colours and their appetite. Starting from the bottom left, I have decided to choose “Long John Silvers’”. Long John Silvers’ are famous for their deep fried fish and French fries. Since I came from a Teochew background back in Singapore, fish can be seen as one of the essential dishes for a Teochew meal. The fact that Long John Silvers’ is one of the few Fast-food chains that emphaysises on Fish, it further showed the huge difference between a Earthly being and a Squarely being.

The next square above me is a wealthy square. His skin is able to reflect against sunlight, hence making it in comparison with a similar shade of blue called “Aquamarine”. Aquamarine is also known as a gem which is under the same grouping as Sapphire. When Aquamarine selected the fast food, he decided to go for Pizza Hut (Red, black and a bit of yellow), and it so happened that Pizza Hut was the most expensive meal out of the six fast-food.

The next square is known as “midnight blue” since he had a darker shade of blue on his skin. He was the kind of person who stayed up late in the night doing his own work, ending up with little or no sleep at all. Instinctively, he picked out the Mac-Donald’s meal, perhaps not knowing that Mac-Donald’s now has outlets opening 24 hours daily.

Moving on is Cyan, the fickle minded square. It is interesting to note that although Cyan has a certain amount of blueness in him, he also has the equal amount of greenness as well, making him indecisive on whether he should be a blue square or a green one. He chose the MOS burger set. Similarly, MOS burgers sell their burger in a “fickle minded” way. Being famous for their rice burger, the creators of the rice burgers was stuck with the Japanese lifestyle of eating rice and the Westerners lifestyle of eating burgers, so they decided to combine the both together, just like how Cyan looks like.

Being the smallest square, Baby blue clearly shows the youthfulness and childishness of a kid. He chose the KFC meal. Although KFC and MOS burger almost have a similar set of colours, KFC has a slight beige to its lighter portion unlike MOS burger who uses the white background. Other than MacDonald’s, KFC has also adopted a mascot concept in line with their meals so as to cater to the children. This was why Baby Blue picked up the Chicky Student Meal, which is smaller in comparison with the rest of the meals.

Finally, Azure is the last square friends who joined us for the picnic. Azure is commonly used on Earth to represent the clear blue sky, hence he adopted similar traits of being environmentally friendly and healthy living. He chose Subway, knowing from the package that Subway does not use polystyrene materials and uses recycled plastic bags as their carrier. Subway is also one of the healthiest fast food out of the 6 meals.

From the picnic, I have learnt that sometimes, Colours and people have a link with one another in terms of purpose, emotions and perceiving distance. It can be used to represent an object, or even used to enhance the appreciation of a particular object, simply by understanding the nature of the colour. In conclusion, when colours are seen at face value, it might all be in a complete mess, but with the clarity of what square represents, it will become clearer why the square is in that particular colour and size, and the whole mess of squares will then turn into a picnic with 5 square friends.

A reasonable amount of effort was put into creating this collage.. Although my piece wasnt selected by the ID peeps, and was commented on the "hard to mark" pieces, I was happy for the entertainment factor it has created for the crowd..:)

Labels: Industrial Design