Category: Make Something 2013

What do you collect? Work with a collection of objects you have in your home (or borrow a friend’s if you like).

This is actually the challenge for Day 5, but we decided to switch things around since today’s scheduled challenge would require us to go for a walk and it’s too late for that since we can’t leave a sleeping baby at home alone!

My first thought for this challenge was to do something with my video game collection. I also wanted to return closer to the theme of papercraft. I dug into a box of old games and picked out the game cartridge for Super Mario 64 – a landmark game that made a lasting impression on me.

I scanned all sides (rolling the curved side along the scanner as the sensor moved) and combined the scanned images into a flattened version of the cartridge. Taking that to the cutting board, I improvised some tabs for gluing and made a papercraft cartridge.

As a bonus creation, I decided to also scan Heidi’s collection of airline teaspoons. (There are some real gems in there, including Ansett Airlines.) I like how the heads of the spoons blur away in the scanned image.

 

“Make something out of paper, but don’t use scissors, or glue, or draw on it.”

Heidi and I got out the wrapping paper box for this one. We found some party streamers and tried laying them out on the ground in different patterns. I tried to make a face, but even the slightest breeze (ie. from moving my legs) was enough to upset the crepe paper. That and it was going to have to be huge! So I settled for an eye instead.

Here’s an angled shot. It makes it look a bit more… like a cult symbol.

Afterwards I still wanted to make a face, so I tried my hand at freestyle paper tearing. I started with a normal A4 paper and tried to tear pieces away in order to leave a single piece that looks like a face. Upon reflection, it would have been easier to just tear a bunch of different shapes and then arrange them to form a better-looking face.

Three days in and this creative journal is already teaching me to be less of a perfectionist. I’m not particularly fond of anything that I’ve made so far, but I don’t have enough time to iterate or start again – so it’s been more of an exercise in trying something out, posting it, and then moving on to whatever task awaits tomorrow. Until tomorrow!

Today’s creative journal inspiration: “What’s your favourite animal? Use it as your inspiration today.”

I like cats.

Keeping with the themes of papercraft and getting things done, I figured that I would build something that I’ve been meaning to for quite a while: a stereo viewer for my iPod Touch.

Minh and I bought a pair of reading lenses a while ago with this in mind. Here’s a picture of the original testing we did. When held very close to the eyes, these lens do a great job of focussing each half of a side-by-side stereo image.

I initially thought that I would make an fov2go, but the lenses I have appear to be too small (that, and the fov2go build look fairly complicated). So I just winged it.

The lens remind me of cat eyes, and I decorated the viewer to be even more cat-themed.

Overall, the viewer works quite well (with a rather convincing 3D effect) despite the image bleed (because I didn’t put in a central divider). If you make a similar device, you can easily test it by searching for “yt3d” videos on YouTube. (Interestingly, there’s a full-length 3D version of Titanic on Youtube… although it’s not in English.)

If anything, making this has just made me want a Hasbro My3D. They’re currently cheap to buy in the US (presumably since they were made for the last generation of iOS devices), but shipping to Australia is awfully expensive. On the other hand, I think they’re cool and you can make games for it using Unity3D… hmmm… maybe I’ll just wait for my Occulus Rift.

It’s day 1 of my 365 daily creative journal. (See my previous post for more information).

Today’s task was to: “make something that fits in the palm of your hand using only materials in your immediate environment.”

I happened to be in the dining room for this challenge, so I used a table cloth, some nearby Christmas wrapping ribbons, and a few food items and plates from the kitchen. I arranged them into something that I could photograph, cut, and fold into a simple character. (The camera and printer are in the living room, so I figure they count as my immediate environment.)

Anyhow, here are some process photos:

And a final shot of my creation in the palm of my hand:

I learnt that superglue doesn’t really adhere to photographic paper (on their side) and that I probably would have been better with a plain background (rather than using the plates, which added texture). That being said, the plates were handy for spacing – I rolled the top plate along the table to check that the radius would match the four square plates placed side-by-side.