Introduction
In the introduction to this project, I was immediately thrilled to get to work with a partner. I believe the most fun part of the creative process is getting to bounce ideas off of people and getting to share some interesting conversations.
Exercises
One of our first exercises was to explore different types of paper mechanisms. This was incredibly fun. I made a few quick mechanisms that got me a pretty good understanding of how to move things with paper. If you have kept up with me during my process as a designer, you know by now that I love sports. So, my first mechanism of course was going to involve sports. I decided to use a penny as a weight to make a slider. I attached an image of a football to the penny and made it travel down a filed and go through a set of goal posts. Here is what I came up with:
I still play with this on a daily basis because I really just think its quite fun. Next, I wanted to do something with a face, and what better face than Mickey Mouse? None. So, I made a mechanism that moves his eyes with a paper pulley. Here is what I came up with:
Ideating for the Final!
Because we are finally working in partners, I can finally bounce some ideas off of a partner. Jarrett and I spent our first day just talking about each other’s interests. This helped us narrow down some ideas. Here were some of our original ideas:
– Cat and Mouse concept (Tom and Jerry)
– Paintball match
– Archery
After some complications with the cat and mouse, we decided that we needed to stick to a less unoriginal idea. So, we decided to start working with the paintball idea. We had decided early on that I would make the gun and he would make the explosion. So, here was my first iteration.
This video was quite simplistic, as it was done through Snapchat. However, it did a great job of showing us what needed to be done in order to make the visuals successful.
I drew some quick sketches of what this could possibly look like in a more complex sense. I just wanted to see if there was anything else I could do to make this more interesting for the viewer. Here are some of those sketches:
This design was our literal first idea. I liked it originally, but it was missing some intrigue.
This idea included a paintball that was shot from the background, comes into the foreground, and goes back into the background and hits a target. I did really like this idea, but translating the ball over that much space would have been very hard to display. The viewer may have been confused.
Jarrett came up with an idea to include a mask. This would ensure we could be more detailed in the explosion, and in turn make it more intriguing.
We decided to go with the gun and mask idea because we thought it was 1) the easiest for the viewer to understand and 2) the most intriguing design.
Once our idea had been finalized, we decided to get a little bit more accurate and head over to the laser cutter. Here is my image of the paintball gun that I made using the pen tool on Adobe Illustrator.
Once my file was complete, I sent it down to the laser cutter! 2 days later we ran into a little bit of a problem. All of our papers were burnt in the laser cutter. So, this knocked us back a few days, but it was noting we couldn’t handle.
After the quick set back, we were back on track and ready to roll with the final production.
Final
Everything was cut and ready to go! All that was left was tweaking some small details to get ready for filming the stop motion video. When working on my final piece, I began to realize how difficult it is to work with very small bits of paper. Not only was everything difficult to cut, everything was difficult to situate and place in the correct location. This is especially difficult with large hands that sweat quite a lot. So, I began using tweezers to hold things into place.
My video took me incredibly long to make because of how tedious it was with small details.
I decided that the best lighting was in my bathroom, so I taped down my phone on top of a little stand and shot everything from above. Here was my set up (it worked great):
Here is what I ended up with after a lot of tries and mess ups!
Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBMH33CblD0
What I learned
Because this was our first partner project, I definitely learned some things about how to work better with a partner. In a high school setting where you are together every single day, it is a lot easier to plan out a project because you automatically are with your partner for a few minutes a day. However, in a situation like this where you may only see your partner once a week, communication is key. You need to agree on set deadlines for yourself and your partner in order to make sure everything gets done in a timely manner. This was evident to me at the beginning, but I definitely think I could have done a better job with it. Overall, working with a partner is absolutely amazing, especially if everything is planned well and executed well.