My mood board surrounds the theme of bathmophobia, the irrational fear of stairs/slopes. The feeling that this board gives is dark and I see a lot of black and gray in it. It gives a really strong feeling of fear especially because most images are dark and gloomy. Most images are also set in a location where there’s not much around it giving it a sense of loneliness.
This is a sketch I made and what I imagine my scenic piece would look like.
Scenic Design:The aspect of a production that gives a sense of space or location. Can be realistic or symbolic. Aids in creating atmosphere.
Mood Board: A poster that contains imagery that will help focus the design or conceptual weight of a piece of theater.
Thumbnail Sketch: A quick sketch or drawing that becomes that starting point for a design.
Stage Configuration: The layout of the stage in the theater you’re producing the play.
Ground-plan/Birds eye view: The top down look of the design. Gives you an idea of where things are on the stage.
Elevation: The front look of the design. Gives you an idea of what you will see when you are looking at the stage.
Flat: A scenic piece that is used to build doorways or walls. Light, flexible, and can be built to order.
Sight Lines: The view of an audience onto the stage. Site lines are taken from many different seats to see what they see.
Masking/Masking Flats: flats or curtains designed to hide the elements of the stage we don’t want the audience to see.
Through this activity, I learned to use the miter saw and the table saw. I also learned a variety of different painting techniques such as texturing and scumbling that I hadn’t known about previously. The most interesting thing that I’ve noticed is that sometimes when you make a mistake in your flat, you would panic, but actually if you take a step back, the mistake will barely be noticeable. Since the flat is going to be a scenic piece, the audience probably won’t pay too much attention to the details of the flat which is why mistakes can be made while painting, making the process fun and meaningful.
SCUMBLING
SCUMBLING (finished)
LINING
LINING (finished)
SHADOWS
HIGHLIGHTS
HIGHLIGHTS AND SHADOWS (finished)
TEXTURING
SPATTERING
Finished product :
To start off, we scumbled the flat and added three different colors to it. It looked really wrong at first but once we did our lining, it looked normal. We did the lining with gray and proceeded to do the highlights with white and shadows with a darker gray. Since the light was going to hit our flat from the top right corner, all our shadows were on the bottom left of our bricks. After highlighting and adding our shadows, we added a watered-down gray to create more dimension in our flat. This technique is called texturing. Finally, we spattered paint onto our flat to make the flat look even more realistic.
My final product is a 4-button fidget toy with different activations for each button. The first button connects to a blue LED light, the second button connects to a speaker that will BEEP BEEP, and the third button connects to a red LED light. The last button is a simple fidget toy for when you’re stressed out (very good for when circuitry frustrates you because I tested it out myself).
I learned a lot about soldering, programming, and circuitry through this project. There is definitely room for improvement, but overall, I’m pretty proud that it works. If I had more time for the project, I would 3-D print a compartment to hide all the wires and paint the baseboard. I faced a lot of design problems and technical issues while adding circuitry to the buttons because the button was made entirely of paper but luckily I had help and feedback from my peers and my teachers. One of the biggest challenges in this project was the circuitry and wiring. I found it really hard to solder the wires onto paper (it was near impossible) and the copper tape wasn’t big help either as it frequently ripped and folded.
After watching the video, I tried following it and making the same thing. However, I soon realized I wasn’t experienced enough to fold this complex origami. I found a similar 4-button origami video and followed that. This is my first prototype. As you can see, it was pretty ugly and the buttons were sometimes broken. This was because I didn’t spend much time perfecting my folds, I just wanted to test to see if this was a do-able project. I showed this toy to my family and also to Mr. Michie. The main feedback I got was that this is a great toy but the spring in the button was inconsistent. Mr. Michie mentioned that this seemed like a simple project that could be finished within 2 lessons and asked me to try and add more complexity to it. So after consideration, I decided to try and add circuits and LED lights to my project.
The materials needed were 2 pieces of 21×21, 1 piece of A4 paper, and 4 pieces of 13×13..
Here’s a clip of me testing if an LED light would work with my 1st prototype. I had to test it just to make sure that the paper and everything would be do-able.
I made a really simple circuit with copper tape and a battery pack. The LED worked pretty well and I was happy with the result so I moved onto the next step of the project and made another prototype.
My second prototype was much better. I spent more time on it and I think it came out much nicer. The buttons worked almost about 90% of the time. I figured that I could start adding circuits and experimenting with what I can and cannot use. I made my buttons different colors and made the spring more consistent. I started considering how the LED and power switch would work together. My initial idea was to program a Circuit Playground Express as I already had background knowledge on how to program it from a class I took last year. I would make the bottom of the button conductive somehow and when you pressed the button, it would trigger the circuit and activate the LED light.
I soon realized that the CPE wouldn’t work well with my button because the outputs would need to be sewn on. I switched to an Arduino. I’ve never programmed an Arduino before so this was a new skill I had to learn. Watching a bunch of YouTube videos and asking for help from my teachers helped a lot. I figured that the easiest way was just to make a circuit with copper tape and wires. After a bunch of testing, I figured that I had to add a metal “ring” around the button to make it easier to conduct the electricity. In theory, the bottom of the button would be soldered to a wire connected to the LED light and the “trigger” copper tape at the base of the box would be wired to the Arduino. When the spring is in compression, the base of the button would touch the copper tape, allowing the Arduino to conduct electricity to the LED light. This proved to work but came with a bunch of technical problems with the wiring and the conduction. I programmed my Arduino like so:
The spring mechanism inside the buttons is my energy conversion. As you can see in the picture, it’s actually just made out of paper.
I connected my Arduino to a battery pack and soldered an LED light to the wires that were connected to my Arduino. This was quite difficult for me as for some reason, I could not seem to solder my components properly. I was extremely frustrated at this stage. One of the suggestions I got was to just hot glue the wires together but make sure that they touch because hot glue doesn’t conduct electricity. I was pretty desperate so I went with this idea and it surprisingly worked well. I originally wanted one LED light to blink and one LED light to fade in and out. However, I faced many design problems while making this because the Arduino output pins only give out 5 volts and I have to program the special outputs if I wanted to change the voltage outputs. I was conscious about the remaining time I had to spend on this project so, in the end, I gave up that thought.
This is me testing my LED light: (the video wouldn’t upload 🙁
I soldered the wires to the button and the LED light. Connecting the wires was really hard at first but towards the end, I got pretty good at soldering. The copper wire was really prone to ripping so I had to repair it a lot. A really useful tool I learned to use through this project was the multimeter. Prior to this, I never knew that the multimeter was so helpful.
Next, I connected a speaker to another button and plugged it into my Arduino. This process took quite a while as I had trouble programming my Arduino as I forgot to write pin 12 as an OUTPUT. It took me two lessons to finish up that button. I wired a blue LED light to the output A2 and the red LED to the output pin 12. The last button was a fidget toy with no input and output because I ran out of time, but also because this toy was extremely frustrating to make, and having a fidget button to press was a form of stress relief (for me).
The ES theater’s fly space is newer and all the legs and drapes are labeled with numbers. The drapes and curtains are all newer in the ES theater, but they are also smaller because of the fly space. The fly space is also a lot more bright in the ES theater and the railings are much higher as there were higher safety standards taken into account when they built this thing.
FLY SPACE IN MS/HS THEATER
FLY SPACE IN ES THEATER
The fly system is also a lot newer in the ES theater. However, the MS/HS theater has a bigger fly space. A long long time ago, people used to pull the ropes that controlled the drapes by hand. Nowadays, the system is automated so you can press a button and bring down the curtains without needing a person to manually do it. The ES theater has a newer fly system so the curtains come up and down more smoothly as the pinwheel is longer.
MS/HS THEATER FLY SYSTEM
FLY SPACE IN THE ES THEATER
The lighting room in the MS/HS theater is in an enclosed room behind the audience. This is an advantage because the audience won’t be able to hear the people doing the lighting. However, it’s also a disadvantage because the view can be blocked by the audience. The lighting panel in the ES theater is above the audience, however, it’s not an enclosed space so the backstage crew must stay quiet.
LIGHTING PANEL IN THE MS/HS THEATER
LIGHTING PANEL IN THE ES THEATER
Reflect on what you did well, what you still need to work on, and any new insights that you gained about the study of literature.
I think I did a good job keeping time and maintaining the discussion (keep it going).
I definitely think I could’ve talked more and contribute more to the conversation but we had a big group and a lot of people were talking.
I found that it was really interesting how some thought that the motif of basketball symbolizes Arnold’s hopes and dreams while others thought that basketball was representative of the journey Arnold goes through.
-energy transformation in the form of a switch or a button.
-include LED and circuits.
-sustainable (?)
-a toy that is somewhat “playable”
My initial idea is to create a button similar to the one in the video below. I saw this video and I was immediately intrigued by how the whole thing was made out of paper. I want to either try and make a switch or a button fidget toy thing that transfers energy with paper because it looks cooler that way. I might use fusion to design some components and add circuitry to this button device.
I took circuit class in 8th grade so I am confident that I can add circuitry and LED lights to this project. I think it would be cool if you press one of the buttons and something lights up or music plays. My plan would be to experiment with button origami and try to add circuits to it. We’ll see how it goes.
1. What problems or needs can you identify that could be addressed with this kind of design?
2. What examples of solutions to similar problems already exist that we can learn from?
We can learn from the invention of buttons, levers, and other simple mechanisms in our everyday life. A lot of useful tools are often overlooked because we don’t realize the science or the engineering aspect of it. A simple design such as a light switch is actually fascinating but not everyone knows how it works. A light switch provides accessibility and efficiency and also entertainment to young children. (At least when I was young I used to try and balance the light switch).
3. What else can inspire us?
Nature is our biggest inspiration because when we research animals or plants, we can use them as precedents and learn from them. For example, bats use radars to navigate in the dark. Even with poor vision, they manage to fly around swiftly. The way
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