Archives for December 2018

December 11, 2018, Filed Under: SFX 2018

Silicone Lifecasting Hiccups

Would like to preface this by clarifying that me and my team entered this with very limited background knowledge in casting and molding making. That said, definitely made the mistake of thinking working with the material would be a lot more straightforward and smooth sailing that the reality turned out to be. Here is a snapshot of the Silicone vs Latex question we started with.

Silicone is much pricer than latex, but the trade off is that (in terms of making a mold) it is reusable and doesn’t require hours of paint on process. The issue comes in that using a latex cast using a Silicone mold would have left the mold unsuitiable for being used with silicone in the future due to a unique interaction between them. In short, silicone will not cure when exposed to latex, to the extend that even having a box of latex gloves in the same room can prevent proper curing. If latex was ever used in our mold, we would never be able to go back to using silicone in it. Early on the weight was scaled much more towards keeping our options open (rather than just plunging forward and seeing where that leads us) which led to a lot of overly cautious decisions that came back to bite us. Even more significantly, latex needs to be able to breathe to dry, and therefore would have to be painted on in layers somewhat to get the details of the mold-a process that would have taken hours compared to what we believed was simple pouring for Silicone. Silicone may be better for making reusable molds but the high price of it forced us to be drastically more material conscious and conservative on rapid prototyping than in retrospect would have been ideal for testing. It led to every test being a 50 dollar investment with very high stakes-leading to a lot of delays in the interest of decision making, repeated shipping as running out came up despite us trying to use as little as possible, and just an overall suffocation of the prototyping phase. Silicone also has other challenges. While Latex would have prevented the mold from being used with silicone, casting silicone in silicone also runs the risk of them sticking to eachother if a release agent isn’t used properly. The material conversely doesn’t like sticking to most other things, including most make up and painting options. This led to another axis of struggles, in that our past knowledge of color application needed to be changed to work with silicone specific paints, and led to a lot of our background knowledge no longer being as helpful. Silicone samples and experts were also much harder to come by locally which led to a lot of this work being done on the trust of information we are reading online applying in our case. Silicone is a wonderful material but for someone who is inexperienced, going for the liquid latex and just letting yourself fall fast may have proved more appropriate for our uses.

December 4, 2018, Filed Under: SFX 2018

A Barn Fit For a Kook

I was assigned the task of creating the barn and trees for our Space Kook. Both of the items went through a variety adjustments, but the final product was something that our entire team was proud of.

I began the process by making note of the dimensions of our overall environment. A group conversation took place to discuss the details of how large our Space Kook would be in reality, in turn affecting his appearance against the barn and set trees. We decided that the Kook was about seven to eight feet tall, and that our barn door was about ten feet tall. We then created a ratio to match the height of our six- inch miniature.

The barn was created out of cardboard. The first draft was simply painted brown to imitate a wooden pattern. We decided that the finish was too smooth and needed more texture to create a more genuine appearance when the light hit our set.

The next version was created by covering the cardboard with Jaxsan, an acrylic latex coating used predominantly for waterproofing roofs and thermal insulation. It acts similarly to a moist clay, and creates a nice grainy texture when dried, imitating the strokes it was applied with. I coated the cardboard using a popsicle stick and spread it on in horizontal lines. I next painted multiple layers of browns, blacks, and reds to imitate a wood grain pattern.

At this point the board was quite flimsy, and still lacked the precise wooden texture that we were striving for. The finish was one large coated piece and seemed flat.

Next, I cut the board covered in Jaxsan into thin strips, and then again into smaller rectangles. I aligned all the pieces on a thicker piece of board, and re-glued them on. This finally created a texture that we wanted, giving the appearance that the barn was created of many wooden boards.

Lastly, the barn was painted with a matte gray texture, the same color as the rest of the environment. This way, when light hits the set, it appears more cohesive as a unit.

The trees also went through a few variations. The first version of them was created with a small pipe and metal wire. The trees were to be painted black and act as silhouettes. It was decided that the branches of the first version were too thin and spaghetti- like in comparison to the trunk.

We then shifted to using foam board. The trees were at first difficult to cut, resulting jagged edges. I switched to a knife that better suit my hand size, and consistently changed the blade to create more smooth cuts.

The trees were then embellished with Jaxsan texture, a holey cloth, and black moss. They were then fastened to the final miniature set with hot glue.

Here is an image of our final set, including the trees and barn, in front of a green screen during our shooting day.

December 3, 2018, Filed Under: Bat Camcorder, class resources, progress report, SFX 2018, student experience

Product Development of an Underworld Camcorder- An ‘Eye-Opening’ Experience

From beginning to end this past semester, the product development of the Bat Camcorder challenged us weekly to consider design changes for both function and aesthetics. Now that the effect has been filmed, a finalization of the prototype is continued in the coming weeks for exhibition and live demo-ing. There will be two final iterations- a final iteration of the skin and of the functioning body. Working on this project has definitely been an adventure and learning experience in design, collaboration, engineering, and integrated systems and there have been many lessons to note.

Here are some of the major takeaways and common themes that were seen throughout working on this project:

Lesson #1: Don’t Doubt Initial Designs

This lesson was best learned through our camcorder mechanisms and our end result for both the eyelid and wing mechanism. Throughout the course of our project, the hinge and eyelid were major components to our design that consistently failed iteration after iteration. Some of the initial prototyping designs and ideas were later implemented and proved to be the most effective. For the eyelid, it was a lever mechanism made out of wire and Crystal Gel. For the hinge, it was the use of elastic material to provide tension for the wing screen that worked well. Keeping the initial mechanisms in the time frame that we had allowed us to focus on other parts of the design and integration that were essential to the completion of our project. It is important to realize that if an initial design works for product intent, it may not be necessary to try to continually improve it even though that may seem like the ‘right’ thing to do.

Filmed design with elastic hinge attachment and Crystal Gel eyelid

Lesson # 2: Be Creative with Your Resources

As mentioned in previous posts, this lesson largely came from the ‘skin’ of our product and the Crystal Gel, a coating meant for scenic art, that we were able to use in a different way than intended. Although not all the resources we sought were readily available, we managed to experiment and use our feasible options to complete our project.

Experimentation and application of Crystal Gel as product ‘skin’

Lesson # 3: Failing is Progress

This past semester was about iterative design in which failure was required to keep moving forward. Each iteration was a failure in it’s own way but we were able to learn and discuss together what our next steps would be. This was especially important for us to be able to try new ideas and experiment with tangible results. This allowed us to continually learn which designs worked and which ones didn’t.

All in all, having gone through what I would describe as a design SPRINT, our product outcome is a result of rapid iterative design that utilized rapid prototyping and collaboration between a diverse team of student designers. None of which would have been possible without the support of our amazing instructors , the Longhorn Maker Studio, and helpful classmates. These lessons and experiences are going to move forward with us throughout the rest of our careers and beyond. ☆