DESIGN PROJECT 3 LEATHERCRAFT 3

VICTATE CAD/CAM

Yesterday we had a session booked on the big laser cutter to engrave some old skateboards CAD/CAM style. The graphics were made on Illustrator, ready to bring onto TechSoft. The boards were all super old and battered (not to mention all the PVC-containing vinyl stickers everywhere) so they needed some sorting.

Good old sandpaper did the trick. Beforehand we ran them through the bobbin sander, whilst stickers were chiselled off.

Some technical stuff about sandpaper (abrasive paper): lower numbers (80) are more coarse, higher numbers smoother (360). We used pretty low numbered sheets, best for rapid removal.

Sadly, the Illustrator file which was correctly exported as a .emf file wasn't able to be read by 2D Design for some reason, leaving Andrew and ourselves baffled. Not sure why. Very frustrating. Although transfer from Illustrator isn't strictly recommended, there are guidelines such as using fine lines (0.25), having no fills, no layers, and other little things, all of which should have been ok. Hmm.

This isn't the last you'll hear about the Victate skateboards. We'll be back!

[MAKING] CAD/CAM 3D OBJECTS

I went for a MUJI-esque business card holder. Some miscalculations led to a slightly messy finish, but it does do the job. It was proper rapid too, a very easy process I found.

 

And here's an acrylic piece of bling. Measuring 16.5cm across, it has holes either side for a leather string or metal chain to attach as a necklace, strap accessory or key holder. Haha.

[IMAGE] STOP MOTION STRUGGLE

One of us held the camera, the other altered the scene. I don't know if we worked slowly but the changing daylight affected the shots, detracting from the consistency through shots. And some messy sequences looked untidy and almost ineffective. Some sequences looked great though. Anyway, we finished shooting but I didn't feel they were good enough to produce a nice video, and so the movie making process wasn't very fun, which was a shame. (My fault too.)

We used Adobe Premier Pro for the first time as well, which was another thing to have to get from zero. Tough couple of days and with no real outcome I'm afraid. But I do have the shots so I should finish an animation, even if it's not the whole thing. It'll be up here.

[IMAGE] STOP MOTION STORYBOARDING

PET PHOTOGRAPHY

This is Toffee & Fudge, taken with a Canon camera from the MEC.

DESIGN PROJECT 3 TECHNICAL BITS

Design Project 3 heavily involved coding (using Arduino and Processing), Illustrator drawings, physical making, stop motion photography and video editing. So lots of technical studies there. All on the blog. http://www.tleecitizensensor.blogspot.com.

ARDUINO BOARDS

Just quickly used the Making workshop to cut wood, drill some holes and put in some screws. Easy.

[GRAPHICS] CONDEFENCE LOGO

Again, this is just simply finding an idea and drawing it on Illustrator. I've not come up with a final look, but I do think green is the right colour.

Straight or playful?

Does the football work? Player? Brain?

Emphasise the wordplay? Too much?

For sure it's a difficult process. My way of working would be to keep trying and visualising until something feels right. But I haven't yet. The day wasn't long enough.

[GRAPHICS] WEB WIREFRAME

I've been thinking about a business concept for educating footballers. It's not the most thought out plan in the world ready for launch tomorrow, but it's certainly an idea that has been lingering for a little while, and may fruit some day. Don't steal my idea.

Condefence.

Great name I think. Here's the rationale.

And then the wireframe. This is essentially the mock up of the website. How the home page looks. What buttons link where. What each page looks like. How the hierarchy stands. Like a site map.

[GRAPHICS] STYLE SHEET MENU

Using several Styles, our task was to design a menu for an Italian restaurant, made up by Avni.

The background course title is one paragraph style.
Each item title is one style, each description one style, prices one style.
Header title and footer notes were independently assigned.

[GRAPHICS] INDESIGN STYLE SHEETS

Style sheets allow for a specific setting to be saved and selected where needed. For example, a paragraph uses font Helvetica at size 11 in #456001. If I want another paragraph somewhere else in the same style, I can just select my pre-made style instead of setting each element every time. It's a time saver.

There are two types: paragraph styles and character styles, each window found under Type & Text. Paragraph styles are useful for batch text (ie paragraphs), whereas Character styles apply for individual letters, for example in the case of drop caps at the start of each chapter, or for ligatures, etc.

[GRAPHICS] MANUAL TRACING

For more complex images, we can trace manually, using the Pen tool. Clicking adds points, shift+Click adds curves and the Anchors are adjusted for right angles. I took this image from our JFC photo log and chose to trace an outline of the boys.

And by using the Layers, I can control individual lines and layers by selecting what to view and what to hide. In this case, each boy and the ball (blue, orange, black) are all independent Layers, as are the green borders and strap I added. The original photograph is also a Layer itself, positioned at the top to cover the rest, and hidden also.

[GRAPHICS] LIVE TRACING

Bringing in a JPEG image from the web, in this case the new adidas Euro 2012 football, the tracing tool automatically blocks out the image into colour patches it reads. As these 'blocks' are all independent, I can then change the colour of a certain block. Potentially very useful.

CHRISTMAS PHOTOGRAPHY 25.12.2011

This is not to showcase the cooking quality, but the personal use of SLR photography. But yes, the food looks good right! Hand. Made.

Depth of field isn't quite right. Only salad leaves and odd bit of meat in focus...

 A little out of focus.

 Foreground background, got it down.

 A little dark...

Yeahhh nice focus on the Maldon sea salt haha.