fabrication – Texas Applied Arts | The University of Texas at Austin

November 12, 2018, Filed Under: SFX 2018, Warbringer

Race to the End

Well this week we definitely were put to the test and went full speed. Finally through the kitpices onto the ship and did some rough up to give it the old and aged look. Kaan’s and Kyle’s artistry skills are definitely displayed well in the final product of the shop.

Finaly my job was to get the set created and make the atmosphere of which the Proudmore will rise. Due to time constraints we resorted to physically moving the ship and using dry ice to help with the mystic feel.

We tested the dry ice but noticed the fog flows downward so we are still working on fixing that issue in the given time we have before our shoot.

We definitely made allot of progress this week as all the parts and pieces came together and with the help of the talented and expert painter Karen Maness my fellow team meme bears added insane details that will blow you away!

November 12, 2018, Filed Under: Bat Camcorder, SFX 2018, student experience

GELing It All Together

Hello! A lot of stuff has happened since my last post, but let me try to catch you up on what I’ve been working on for the past couple of weeks…

When my team was working out how the “skin” for our BatCam would be produced, we found issues with what we had originally planned regarding the transfer of textures, transparency, etc. So when Karen suggested the use of something called “Crystal Gel,” I was skeptical and honestly, did not think it would really be of any use.

Boy, was I wrong.

If you don’t already know what Crystal Gel is, it is a water-based coating for scenic pieces and props and is often used in scenic design and theatre.

Let me be clear. That is NOT what I used it for.

When first acquiring this material, I really just wanted to see what it could do, so I got out some wax paper and outdated 3D prints and smeared it on to see what would happen.

Crystal Gel is spread out onto wax paper.

It doesn’t look like much at first glance, but by taking the Gel off of the wax paper and holding it up to the light, it provides a frost like, almost transparent quality.

This gave me an idea. Would the Crystal Gel be able to pick up the leather texture as well as it did the creases in the wax paper? And if it did, would we be able to use this material to create a transparent-like skin which my team had talked about earlier in the semester?

The layer of Crystal Gel from the wax paper is held up to the light to showcase its transparency.

In order to test my theory, I layered (from bottom to top) leather, vaseline (to keep the crystal gel from sticking to the leather), the crystal gel, and a prototype 3D printed wing and set it out to dry overnight…

Leather, Vaseline, Crystal Gel, and a 3D printed wing are layered to test the effectiveness of the crystal gel as a wing

And I don’t think I could have gotten a better result. On the table, it looks plain, but when held up to the light, the texture of the leather can be seen imprinted on the gel. Not only did the Crystal Gel adhere to the wing, but by drying on top of the leather, it was able to pick up its texture with great detail.

Crystal gel that dried on top of the leather is held up to the light to showcase its texture.

The Crystal Gel adhered to the wing and acts as a skin on the detached Camcorder wing.

We quickly decided, that this was exactly the kind of look we wanted to go with for the wing, and with some dry brushing and painting, we would be able to get the transparent, skin like texture.

Because the Crystal Gel worked way better than I thought it would, we ultimately decided to use it for the skin of the entire body. We decided to pigment the Crystal Gel in order to get the color we wanted and quickly learned that a little goes a loooooong way.

It took a few tries to get a color we were comfortable with, but once we got one we liked, we laid out the leather (with vaseline) and smoothed out the Crystal Gel so as not to get any streak marks. We let the Gel dry like this, later peeling it off of the leather and fitting it to each individual part of the painted body.

The pigmented Crystal Gel is stuck onto the 3D printed body using a solution for 3D prints.

We used a 3D print coating from Smooth On in order to attach the Crystal Gel “skin.” This way, we could be sure that the “skin” wouldn’t budge when our actors are holding it!

However, this product has more uses than as a coating for scenic pieces or props, and being used as “skin” for Bat Camcorders…

One of the characters in our story Refund High School, has a signature barrett that she always wears and after modeling one in Vectorworks and 3D printing it, we decided it would be great if it weren’t so rigid since it had to bend around a clip and go in our actress’s hair. Since we had just gotten the Crystal Gel in, we decided to try it and see what happens.

First, we made a silicone mold of the 3D printed barrette out of our homemade silicone using 100% silicone caulk and blue dawn soap. Once the mold was done drying, we filled it up with the gel and let it be for 48 hours.

*Side note* Something we learned early on dealing with the Crystal Gel, is that the drying time completely depends on how thick you layer it and how much of it is exposed to air. The more Gel directly exposed to air, the faster it will dry and less likely to still be a goopy mess when you come back to it!

After a 2 day drying period, we ended up with a barrette face that we were able to glue to an alligator clip. This allows the barrette to be moved and bent without worrying about it breaking.

I know I just talked a lot about this material and what it can do, but it goes to show how a material you’ve never used before can quickly become one of your most valuable assets. Crystal Gel was able to solve a lot of the issues we were facing and it made my life ten times easier in dealing with our BatCam’s “skin.” Thank you Karen for suggesting this product!

November 5, 2018, Filed Under: Da Arm, SFX 2018

Da Arm Puns! (And Other Team Activities)

My other teammates have touched on some of our failures, our success, and our technical processes, so I am going to speak on our collaboration and what the diversity of our members has brought to the table.

In our group, we have one Theatre Design major, one Arts and Entertainment Technologies (AET) major, and two Electrical Engineering majors. With each of those backgrounds comes individual habits, and practices from studying in that field. On top of that, each member is also incredibly unique in their way of thinking, which is to say more specifically, their approach to problems, problem solving, and collaboration.

Matt with Wyatt's Arm — *Matthew Gutierrez, Electrical Engineer, holding the arm he just helped cast*

There are two examples that perfectly describe the dissonance that we have encountered as a group…

Some members are quick to make decisions, while others are more conservative and wait to make choices

and…

Our group tendency to want to work in “Silos”

Before I say anything else, I want to make something very very, clear; I am not trying to point fingers, or say that any kind of personality, or behavior is bad or wrong.

These are just situations and things that we have noticed about our group that have cause some problems along the way. All people think and act differently, and one of the learning opportunities of this class is to learn how to work with people of different fields of study, as well as those who have different thought processes.

Our first issue we ran into, mostly at the beginning of the process, was the interaction between our group and the timeline. We have members, that by personality are comfortable making decisions and moving forward quickly, but others who are not so much. They want to see as much information as they can before moving forward. Each has their merits, but the fact of the matter, is that we didn’t have time to look at every piece of data of materials, we just needed to make a decision.

Our “silo” issue is still something we are actively trying to watch and keep at bay. The term “silo” comes from a conversation I had with one of our instructors, J.E. Johnson. When we spoke to him about our troubles he shed light on the fact that we fell into the trap a lot of others do as well. We thought we were collaborating and working together, but in reality we were just alone in our silos working on something that may, or may not, be useful to the project. From what I have observed, this was the result of less than stellar communication at times, but mostly just personalities of the group. Our group members just have a tendency to shift away and start working on our individual projects without keeping up communication with the other members.

Matt's Wooden U-Joint — *A wooden joint gets the job done, at a smaller cost than buying and a shorter time than 3D printing.*

To end on a slightly more upbeat note, our differences have also helped push us forward (or kept us afloat, depending on your view). The natural way we think as individuals compliments each other in some respects. At it’s core, we have two engineers, and two artistic design thinkers. When one starts to over complicate, or be over ambitious, the other side can reign them in faster than trial and error. It saved us from trying to model everything via 3D printing when just cutting and sculpting wood would work just as well. Having a viewpoint that is further away on the spectrum (Architect to Sound Designer as opposed to Theatre Director to Lighting Designer) prevents over complication by having someone say “Why not this?” or even just asking “Why like that?” and during the explanation out loud something becomes more obvious.

At this stage in the process (one week from shooting), progress slows down, and it is a lot of clean up and finalizing. This also means more problems and stress than their are satisfying successes (or at least in my experience).

The less you have those big successes, the more you will get dragged down by the problems, and in turn it is hard to speak positively about the situations. However, this class has taught us that there will always be problems when you work in a group, because everyone is different and thinks differently. This project, and this class, is the first time many of us have truly worked with someone with an entirely different skill set and training. It isn’t super common to be in a collaborative based class with a major different than your own, and it is teaching the group a lot of what moving out into the “real world” might mean.

-Wyatt Laster