This week in creative play we were in the makerspace studio where we could build our sets and props for stop motion films and otherwise, and we would be collaborating with the digital media students and their tutor Mark, doing some activities that would show us how we could refine things. In animation its about risk taking and trying new things even if things don't work at first we refine and improve upon them to create a final version or outcome to our work. We would be placed into teams of five and together we would build towers that would hold an egg that would resemble that of Alister from the maker space, this I thought would be the perfect opportunity to get to know the digital media students better.
This for me brought back a lot of memories from my college induction when we had to create a tower made from spaghetti and jelly babies, which acted as the perfect bonding session. The key of this session was to show us that life is about collaborating with people just as animators do with the artists in the industry and in this we had to follow several steps about our ideas in industry
1. design- fail- fast
2: Testing
3. Incremental development
4. pivoting finding a balance
5. Lean start up
6. Waterfall
This was something that followed the process of animation the story, concept, art and planning and about bringing them together as one final piece of animation.
We were split into our teams and began work on the towers the rules were simple who could construct the tallest tower and hold an egg for at least 15 seconds, and we could only use newspaper paper. So we set to work, we began with planning and I suggested perhaps the use of tearing tabs in the paper and rolling it into a roll securing it together as we couldn't use sellotape which everyone thought was a good idea and decided to see it worked. At first it did but only because we were using strong paper instead of newspaper paper and sadly when using this paper it didn't seem to work, so we had to find another way. Thankfully a member of our group seemed to think of a way of using folded zig zag paper to create a structure for the tower and we could strengthen it with more pieces of paper, much like a page signature in a book.
We pursued this idea and it seemed sound but the difficulty being would be transporting it to the desk where we would show it to the group. We also didn't consider the height as we looked around and could see that other groups towers were nearly touching the ceiling which to me seemed rather intimidating. In the end we had to try and construct a tower as best we could. The egg meanwhile had to have a caricature of Alister's face so whilst Bonnie a member of the digital media group worked on the egg we worked on the tower.
This for me brought back a lot of memories from my college induction when we had to create a tower made from spaghetti and jelly babies, which acted as the perfect bonding session. The key of this session was to show us that life is about collaborating with people just as animators do with the artists in the industry and in this we had to follow several steps about our ideas in industry
1. design- fail- fast
2: Testing
3. Incremental development
4. pivoting finding a balance
5. Lean start up
6. Waterfall
This was something that followed the process of animation the story, concept, art and planning and about bringing them together as one final piece of animation.
We were split into our teams and began work on the towers the rules were simple who could construct the tallest tower and hold an egg for at least 15 seconds, and we could only use newspaper paper. So we set to work, we began with planning and I suggested perhaps the use of tearing tabs in the paper and rolling it into a roll securing it together as we couldn't use sellotape which everyone thought was a good idea and decided to see it worked. At first it did but only because we were using strong paper instead of newspaper paper and sadly when using this paper it didn't seem to work, so we had to find another way. Thankfully a member of our group seemed to think of a way of using folded zig zag paper to create a structure for the tower and we could strengthen it with more pieces of paper, much like a page signature in a book.
We pursued this idea and it seemed sound but the difficulty being would be transporting it to the desk where we would show it to the group. We also didn't consider the height as we looked around and could see that other groups towers were nearly touching the ceiling which to me seemed rather intimidating. In the end we had to try and construct a tower as best we could. The egg meanwhile had to have a caricature of Alister's face so whilst Bonnie a member of the digital media group worked on the egg we worked on the tower.
Large tower.
To do this new tower we ended up rolling up pieces of paper and twisting them for extra strength to create a tower and even using some papers like string to tie it together, I discovered the strength element when twisting some of the paper rolls and Bonnie suggested using it. Holly part of the animation group, worked to try and stabilise the tower as best she could by screwing up paper and putting it beneath the legs to aid in support. We could've found another way but we were against the clock,
The tower did look a bit of a mess but when finished it did support the egg although the height was much to be desired we had to concede that we might just lose as we looked around the class room. Each team then began to show off their towers one by one starting with a team named the sneaks.
Their tower was so large it nearly touched the ceiling and it looked very well constructed like they'd thought everything through to detail. Their tower was stable and held the egg for the allotted time reaching a total of 1.83cm but determined to succeed they came back with their tower later on and it reached 137cm.
Next was the Swan team so named because they had a swan for decoration in the top of the tower, which I suspected to be a contribution made by Pomiline the spirit in our group. The tower seemed to resemble something that I'd seen in a movie it had legs at the bottom, as well as, a centre structure for support, this looked very creative and made a height of 103cm tall. It is clear this group paid attention in structure and balancing in this tower build.
Swans tower.
Steaming tower:
The steaming team was next and their tower had a bottom structure with tied supports on the tower tube and a place for the egg at the to and seemed to support it very well indeed for the 15 second time limit and their measurement was 106.5cm tall, all these heights were very tall and was all the more intimidating for our tower that was nowhere close to that height.
Stonkers tower:
Team stinkers tower was a colossus all in its own league much like the first team it was scraping the ceiling almost touching it, reaching a height off 162cm tall which made them the leading group in height at least and the egg sat nicely in the spot on the very top without falling out. Each egg tested with a caricature of Alister was then photographed with him to determine likeness.
Showtime tower:
We were now counting down to the final few towers ourselves included and the Showtime teams tower didn't seem to look any better than ours in terms of height reaching only 46cm and it looked like a battle arena crossed with a football stadium given the structure and design and it seemed the eggs holding point was in the spire in the centre of the tower which seemed to hold.
Second to one tower:
The team before us dubbed Second to one was yet another gigantic tower looking like a volcano mixed with the tower from Disney's tangled in my opinion at least, and the support was once again supported by ties and rings made of paper showing innovative thinking and supported the egg. The over all height of the tower was 137.5cm, and then it was time for our contribution to this task.
Squiders tower (AKA Ambitious but rubbish):
It was time to present our tower and Mark could instantly see something poking out of the tower, some one in our group had secretly placed sticks within the tower for support without our knowledge. This seemed to count as a defiance of the rules and a traitor within our group. Despite this little misunderstanding the tower still supported our egg but it didn't change the results we had come stone dead last and the Stinkers had won a victory they deserved in my view given how well the tower was built. Despite this I rather enjoyed this activity and was much looking forward to the activity after break where we would be doing another task with the eggs but this time something differently and more ambitious and fun.
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