A Board fit for a King

Most Important Chess Piece, VG, 2015

The second Action Project in the RPG (2. RPG-2; as it's the second one of the 2 classes, opening up more spots without crowding the class) class has come from just around the corner. This math and design course threw at us the challenge of creating chess pieces, as they would be created with 3D models of layered cardboard, clay, and even 3D printed. We were partnered up after picking a piece and if you're interested in seeing my partner's blogged project, just click the link. In terms of challenges, it was difficult to make the designs just right but I'm actually quite proud of how clean the 3D printed model of my king looks. Without further ado, just below you can see the full slideshow presentation of the process, size calculation, and even thought process of how the king was created.

Habitastic Home

Biomimicry has its second Action Project out of the blue. This time, we are to base a design of a house inspired by 2 animals that were chosen from a Field Experience to the Lincoln Park Zoo. There was a great challenge in this, and for me, that was deciding which animals to choose and how their attributes would be used. An ostrich, sea lion, and a tiger were the options, but what kind of traits would such mobile creatures have that enhances a habitat, a house, a home. Overall, I was proud by my creative decision mainly based off the ostrich, and you can check the poster-presentation just below. I hope you enjoy.

The Process of Prototyping

In the second course this new term, there's Rapid Prototyping, a class that's mainly math and how we can use mathematics to our advantage in prototyping and design. We learned several concepts, mainly what a network is and how a traversable network must work. A network is  series of connected vertices, or corner points. If it's traversable, that means that it must either have only 2 odd vertices, with the rest being even (odd or even number of lines shooting out of that corner), or no odd and only even. Moving on about the first Action Project, we made 2 pairs of designs based off of 2 letter of our choosing. Incidentally, because of a couple of absences, I had both lower case letters "e" and "t". The designs would be made twice, once by hand, and a second time using a digital machine. I was proud of the result of my stencil and sticker (handmade) because aside from long waiting times for the spray paint to dry, they where clean and precise cuts. Just below, you may view the slideshow that tells you everything about what it's like to make something and the different experiences to have between hand made and machine helped.

Animal Repelling Rose?

As the next term begins for the winter, I'll be kicking things off in here with the first Action Project for the Biomimicry course. Biomimicry is a science course that focuses around the idea of using planets for inspiration in engineering and inventing. There were certain challenges throughout this course that incidentally didn't actually come from the course. Ailments that had me out on a couple of sick days pulled me back a lot as it was around the time of introducing the Action Projects, so catching up was tough. That said, just below, you can see a presentation that goes in depth about how a rose inspired me to use it's blueprints (the way that it works, rather than the actual parts) to create an all natural animal repellant, transportable post. It's a camper's best friend!