Final Project- The Eye

For this project, I knew that I wanted to work with fabric. I wanted to work with fabric because I remembered how much fun I had doing the fabric unit this semester, and I loved what I produced. However, in the previous embroidery project, I didn’t push myself to do anything somewhat complicated. Therefore, my main goal of this project was to test myself on how complicated I could get with my stitching. Also, I knew I wanted to take it a step further and not just make a canvas but make a pillow.

I picked out different sized bowls and cups in order to draw circles in the middle of the fabric. These circles would be my guidelines for my stitches. I thought it was going to look really cool with a bunch of different stitches in circles inside of circles. Below are pictures of the different sized bowls I used to trace my circles. 

When the circles were all traced this is what the pattern looked like. 

Then I cut the fabric in a square around the circles in order to leave enough room to make a pillow out of it. I cut two squares of the same size, for the front and the back of the pillow. Below is the fabric after it was cut.

I then went on the website Danny suggested to learn stitching. Here’s the link to the website with different stitches. I started off stitching in the biggest circle by doing the chain stitch. This one was quite complicated to grasp at first, but once I got into a rhythm it started to become second nature. Below is a picture of the very beginning of my chain stitch.

Below is a picture of the chain stitch when it was complete. 

The next stitch I did was a variation of the feather stitch. The reason I couldn’t do the complete feather stitch was because I needed to go in a circle. Therefore, I could only do a half of the stitch, but I am excited for how it turned out. One of the obstacles I ran into is that I bought four colors of thread and two of them were a metallic type thread that turned out to be way harder to manipulate than regular embroidery thread. This was another reason why the full feather stitch wasn’t a success.

In the third circle, I did the satin stitch. This one was complicated also because I had to do it in a circle instead of a straight line. I had to do this one strategically in order to get the circle completely full of strokes of the thread. Below is a picture of the second and third circles complete.

At this point, I liked what I had done, but I was still planning on doing something in the middle of the smallest circle. However, the only thread that I had left was a pink version of the silver metallic that had already given me so many problems. I realized that doing something intricate in the center of the circle with that metallic thread was not a good idea. As soon as this revolution took place, one of my friends walked up to me and asked me if I was making an eye ball. Then I realized that I could use the pink thread to physically create the football shape of an eye ball, and it would look so cool. So I took that advice and pursued it. Below is a picture of the complete eye.

I could have kept the fabric in a square which in reality I wish that I did, but instead I ended up cutting it in the shape of the eye ball itself. This is a picture after I cut both the front and back pieces of the pillow.

I sewed the two sides together inside out leaving a whole in the bottom of the eye in order to turn it inside out and fill it with stuffing. Below are before and after picture of  turning it right-side out.

Then I was able to fill it with stuffing that I purchased from the fabric store. Below is a picture with the stuffing before I sewed the opening closed.

I was able to close the hole in the bottom and complete my pillow. Below is a final picture of the pillow.

This project honestly taught me a lot about fabric and how it can be manipulated. Likewise, I learned how difficult it is to learn different stitching and how different threads used different can present issues. Lastly, sewing designs in a circle is much harder than doing it in a straight line. The next step would be to buy some black fringe type fabric and attach it to the outsides of the pillow. I think it could look really cool and allow for a play on of eyelashes.

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Hungry, Hungry Circles- Project 2

In collaboration with Susana Gomez-Borgos

Description

For this project, we created a highly competitive multiply- player game experience. Hungry, Hungry Circles is a spin-off of the world renowned Hungry, Hungry Hippos board game that we all know and love. Both of which are four player games, that have a certain amount of objects that they must “eat” in order to win the game. However, in Hungry, Hungry Circles you should only eat the objects of the same color as your assigned player or else it will send you right back to where you started and in some cases add to your collection of objects to eat. The game will not start unless there are four people. Players move by using the arrow keys on the keyboard. Each player has eight objects (four square and four triangles) of the same color randomly placed throughout the screen that they are trying to collide with (or eat in our case). If you run into a color of another player and there are not eight shapes of your color on the board (meaning you’ve eaten some of your shapes), the game will push your player circle back down to the starting position and randomly regenerate another object to eat, setting you behind your opponents. However, the game will never generate more than eight objects, so if you run into another player’s color object and you haven’t eaten any of your colored shapes, it will just send you back to the starting position.

Design Challenges

There were many aspects that went into this game in order to make it hard enough that people didn’t get bored, but easy enough that winning was not so far fetched. The speed of the player circles was one of the aspects we had to toy with in order to reach this equilibrium. Additionally, the distance of the collisions between the players and the randomly generated shapes determined the game difficulty.

Technical Challenges

In this game, we created rooms through Socket.io in order to have a game for four players per game. It was a challenge to organize our information in such a way that every player in the room would receive the information in the correct order at the right time. This is important because it allows all 4 players in the room to be looking at the same content on their screen.

Audience

Throughout establishing our audience, we decided that this game is a perfect break activity when working extensively with groups. This is a multi-player game because as seen in the demo (below), there is a possibility that when the static shapes are randomly placed on the screen, they might be placed underneath a shape of a different color. If this were to happen, we would need the opponent colored player to collect their shape in order for us to collect ours.

As we are both finishing this semester, we have found ourselves working in groups for multiple hours and essentially going insane. We have found that taking a break and getting to know your group members strengthens the work environment tremendously.

Medium

This game is meant to be solely played on a computer because it is essential that the players control their circles with the arrow keys from the keyboard. Using the arrow keys to control the circles gives the player more control over the movement and direction of their circle. If it was a mobile game we could not control the speed or direction as easily, which is an essential part of the game.

User Testing

Since we have had this game working, we both introduced it to different groups and it was an absolute success. Some of the feedback was that players were able to get emerged in our game immediately because of the soothing colors of the objects as well as the friendly competitive spirit.

Demo

Hungry, Hungry Circles is here to help you and your group distress while getting more familiar with each other along the way.

We created a landing page for the game that includes simple instructions for the game shown below. The user is directed to the game once they select the button “play.”

Below are screen shots of the players screens when they log in to play the game.

Player 1 Screen

Player 1 Waiting for Others to Join

Player 2 Screen

Player 2 Waiting for Others to Join

Player 3 Screen

Player 3 Waiting to Join

Now, here is what the screen looks like as soon as the khaki player (player 4) clicks “ok” to begin the game.

Then the game begins and players are able to start moving around attempting to eat their own colors while avoiding others! Below is a video of the game in action!

Link to GitHub

ATLAS Event 3

Talk with Nick Whitaker 

Tonight, I was able to go to the talk with Nick Whitaker from the Google News Lab. He explained the Google New Lab’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. This was his way of introducing the new technology of 360 degree camera. He explained that this new technology could potentially be a medium for creating immersive and impactful experiences. He began by explaining that one of the most significant fears he hears from journalists is that they will not be able to keep up. This 360-degree camera is supposed to revolutionized not only the world of journalism but consumers everywhere.

He began to explain the different tools for filming in 360 degrees. I unfortunately am not a filmmaker nor a very knowledgeable photographer, so it was a little hard to comprehend the technical terms. He explained that there are two different types of 360 videos: monoscopic and stereoscopic. Monoscopic is the most common type of 360 images used in Google’s Street View. You are able to move around the space, but there is no real depth perception. Stereoscopic is usually shot with two lenses and creates a shot using a separate input for each eye. This is significant fact that I learned tonight. I was aware of the different types of experiences, but I did not know that there were specific names regarding them.

Later, he went into some of the challenges of shooting in 360 degrees. One of the biggest challenge is that its quite difficult to know exactly what you’re shooting before you shoot. Everything in sight of the camera will be in the shot, but the distance at which it will appear is variable. Likewise, I learned what a stitch line is. It’s the point at which the video from each lenses meets the other to create the full sphere. This creates another challenge when shooting in 3D. Once is never sure if they are standing on the stitch line of the camera. Lastly, most of the time the resolution of most 360 degree cameras is considerably worse considering it has to be rendered into 360.

I unfortunately had to leave the talk a couple of minutes early in order to make it to extra help for my final research presentation for History of Design class. However, I thoroughly enjoyed learning the amount that I did. I am knowledgeable on AfterEffects, Premier, and other Adobe software that involves video, but I do not know filmography well at all. It was super cool to get to know a new technology like this. I believe this is going to be the technology of the future. It was absolutely incredible to learn about the evolving technology of today. I believe this is going to a visionary in many different departments.

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Metal Object- The Golden Triangle

For this project, we were given brass sheet metal and told to make some sort of metal object using at least three of the techniques that we were taught in class. Upon researching for this project, I found that most of the brass objects that I thought were visually appealing seemed to be more on the abstract side. I found these pictures below, which inspired me to try and build long cubes or boxes in order to form some sort of abstract sculpture.

So I began designing. I figured if I cut out a rectangle and divided it into four equal sections then I would be able to fold the sections and make a rectangular prism. Below is a picture of my starting sheet of metal.

I used the lines that I drew as guidance for pounding into the metal with a chisel. I hammered a chisel into the lines straight across the sheet of metal. This caused the metal to weaken, which made it much easier for me to bend the sides. Below is a work-in-progress picture, exemplifying the chisel marks as well as the folding process. 

After much pounding and bending, I got the metal to a point where it started to resemble a rectangular prism. The pictures of this stage are displayed below.

However, once I reached this stage, I realized that achieving four perfect right angles was going to be near impossible, and there was a high potential for my piece to turn out messy. I decided to go in a different direction. The folds were beneficial in creating a really solid V- shaped structure. I pounded the two sides down to  make clean sides for the trench-shaped figure. Then I repeated the process all over again with another sheet of metal to make an identical shape. My plan was to combine the two shapes standing in an interesting way to create an intriguing sculpture. Below is a picture of my two pieces before sanding or soldering. 

The next stage was to sand the bottoms of these pieces in order to get the angles correctly so the figure will be balanced when I soldered them together. Below is a picture showing the pieces with sanded down ends. 

Next, I had to place the pieces together well enough in order to solder some of their edges together. This was much more difficult than I had anticipated. Because soldering only works by heating all three points of connection, it was incredibly hard to get both pieces of brass as hot as necessary. Likewise, I had an enormous amount of trouble holding the two pieces together in the exact position and the soldering iron. Therefore, I had to improvise and tape one of the pieces to the table and lean the other one against it in order for me to solder correctly. Below is a picture of the soldering process. 

Below is a picture of the final soldering points of the sculpture which hold the two pieces together. 

This sculpture turned out to be a success in many ways, however, it was much harder to work with metal than I had anticipated. Bending metal without heating is an incredible task as well as soldering. Sanding and beating the metal down were relatively easy because we had a ton of tools at our disposal. I’m proud of the abstract Golden Triangle that I was able to produce for this project. Below are the final pictures  of the sculpture.

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