Sandbox

Documenting my work-in-progress / updates / experiments! :-) Or, things I'm hanging on my (virtual) fridge.

Entries:

Sep 6 2024

I saved the Writing Center $$$ with < 70 lines of code! :-)

TLDR: Writing a bunch of stuff (Google Apps Script, emails, documentation) to automate, speed up, and eliminate errors in the drop-in tutoring process.

May 12 2024

I made earrings out of air-dry porcelain clay. I painted the pieces with acrylic paint & sealed with triple thick liquid glaze.

Honestly I'd use thinner paint rather than acrylic for future iterations. I make mistakes sometimes and the layers of paint really show on such small surfaces. Over time, I also discovered that triple thick is also not the best glaze for my purposes because the surface gets a little muddy (can be cleaned with just a wet wipe, but still).

However I'm really happy with how the weight distribution and linkage for these turned out! And I'm a big fan of how the different pieces move together when worn as well :-)

Dec 5 2023

I made an incense holder out of air-dry paper clay.

I was happy with the organic(ish) shape of the petals. Also super stoked about how it's able to hold the incense stick upright! I'd want to improve on its ash-holding capacity, though. Perhaps I'd take the time to measure the flowers' diameter more accurately to accommodate for the falling ash.

Dec 12 2022

I made a zoetrope :-)

I prototyped the walk cycle in Blender with as much detail as possible at first, to understand which movements I'd want to preserve.

Prototyped character in Blender (32-frame)

Then I revised it to reach my target number of frames (8) and prototyped its movement on the zoetrope spinning device.

Prototyped character in Blender (8-frame)

Prototyped zoetrope in Blender (8-frame)

After finalizing my design, I made my character frames out of porcelain air-dry clay. The toughest part is remembering which blob of clay belongs to which frame.

Snowman construction site

Clay and cardboard zoetrope ready for in-class critique!

My zoetrope works better on a spinning device & under the right strobe lighting, but unfortunately I didn't take a video. You'll just have to imagine. This GIF emulates that experience though:

Final zoetrope!

This assignment demonstrated to me the absolute necessity of prototyping (3 hours in Blender saved me untold hours with clay), scope planning (can I make 32 snowmen in 1 week? how much clay do I need for 8 snowmen?), documentation (which half-melted clay blob belong to the 5th frame snowman?), and constructive critique (my professor pointed out that I should paint the disc black to direct viewers' attention). You'll never catch me skipping any of these steps in design, writing (code/words), or anything else.

After I turned in this assignment I let my friends pick a snowman to keep. These guys scattered all over the continent now. Biggest thanks to Prof. Salomone @ UofR (Design Fundamentals: Animation class).

Sep 8 2021

I co-led a very exciting workshop with Rochester Design!

Rochester Design (at the time, the only design club on campus) plan to hold a Principles of Design Workshop. I & 3 other RD members compiled 10 basic rules of design - negative space, hierarchy, color contrast, etc., ready to put on the best design workshop for UofR students. The problem? Nobody wants to go to yet another lecture after their classes.

After a weekend of contemplation, I presented my ideas to the other members:

It’s easier to create a bad design than a good one. There's no barrier of entry to bad design, regardless of experience.
It's really, really fun to create an intentionally bad design.
A great way to learn the rules of design is to break them!

...and so my idea for the inaugural Bad Design Contest was on. After learning the design rules, each RD member would come up with the worst design possible and elaborate on which rules they broke. Some incredible designs:

We all had a great time creating. RD members are almost too good at making bad designs... that must mean they learnt the rules!

Shout out to Dustin, Abby, and Zainab for going along with me, and to RD members for the sportsmanship :-)