I thought I'd take a moment and step away from official Digital Storytelling posts to link to some previous projects that all have a Robot theme.
First off, I have a second blog I had to create, for my other class at ESC this semester, Digital Art and Design. Erin's Adventures in Digital Art & Design; Everything on there is creative, so it fits in general with the theme of this blog, but in particular, I want to point out the first post, titled: Photomontage Project -- this project is robot themed.
Second, from this class, Digital Storytelling, I have module 3's Artifacts project, where I used my tin wind-up robots to tell a story. It can be found on youtube:
Finally, the module five project, using voicethread, had a robot theme as well:
In this blog entry, I’d like to focus on a specific creative project, one that involved some serious creativity and ingenuity.
Ladies and Gentlemen, meet my friend FUNK-Bot!
Rewind, a little back-story:
I collect wind-up toy tin robots.
I also just celebrated my 30th birthday recently. The party my husband organized and threw for me had a robot theme, and for the super-surprise, he transformed himself into a funky purple robot to sing “Happy Birthday” to me and serve cake! We decided that he should be known as FUNK-Bot, because let’s face it: What else are you going to call a 5’6” dancing purple robot?
As you can see from the next few photos, FUNK-Bot was a big hit with the crowd!
I think that is basically goes without saying, but a lot of thought went into this, so I thought it would be a great topic for a blog that focuses on creativity! So, now to discuss the process: It all started with a big idea… and some cardboard and a whole lot of duct tape!
Adam started with the helmet, taking an appropriately sized box to fit his head and positioning and cutting the eyeholes. After spray painting the box purple, he cut pieces from the lid of a dollar store disposable cake pan and taped them inside the box to cover the eye holes. The bottom of the cake pan eventually became the shoulders, also covered in spray paint. The detail to the helmet was done using a combination of sharpies and acrylic paint markers. The side antennae are two small flashlights inserted firmly into holes cut in the cardboard.
The chest was constructed in similar fashion, the only major difficulty he encountered in this phase being how to determine the proper armhole size. Adam re-cut the holes 3 times to make them large enough that he was able to pull his arms back inside of without squirming all over the place or crawling out of it awkwardly from the floor (remember, he’s home alone and it’s for a surprise)! At any rate, the most electronic component of this costume was an actual speaker which was playing “Intergalactic” by the Beastie Boys. The speaker is a portable speaker that plugs directly into the headphone jack on any standard mp3 player, can be found here (although fair warning, it really didn’t seem very loud in the midst of all of the excitement, so don’t count on it for making any important announcements).
As far as the footwear went, the original plan involved much higher boots. Sadly, both time constraints as well as the structural integrity concerns ultimately led to a simpler design. In retrospect though, given a little more time and more cardboard resources to pool from, it would have been better to use a pair of shoes as the base and build the boots around them, instead of making the boots stand entirely alone.
The flexible parts of the robot were a little more complicated to construct, but started with an old pair of pajamas. The legs and sleeves were laid out smooth and flat, and then covered with strips of duct tape, which he alternated which side laid at the top and then ran a single strip of duct tape from shoulder to wrist to cover the seam on top and bottom. The gloves started out as a pair of dollar store cloth work gloves, wrapped in duct tape the same as the arms and attached and taped at that seam. Adam wanted me to mention that despite being very careful, the finished pants were a bit tighter to put on and off, so he would recommend factoring in a little extra room for the duct taped parts.
All this ingenuity and creativity made for a wonderfully memorable 30th birthday, if I may say so myself. A special thanks to our friend Laurie, whose own artwork can be enjoyed here, for creating this video:
And if you’re anything like me and you now have that song stuck in your head, the full version (as well as a great video) is here:
Spray paint is a medium that is more likely to call to mind images of gritty, urban graffiti than fine art. But, be that as it may, there are artists all over the creative spectrum who use it as a medium for their art. It combines the versatility and range of an airbrush with the speed of almost instant gratification when it comes to color changes, instead of having to clean out an airbrush between colors.
Having a met a number of graffiti artists in my work as a tattoo artist, I’ve always been intrigued by spray paint and its myriad of applications. For the purposes of this blog, we’re going to turn our focus away from the kind of spray paint applications that are considered towards the property damage side of the spectrum. Instead, we’re going to focus on painting things other than graffiti with spray paint. To get a better idea about what I mean, check out this video (it reminds me of a Bob Ross inspired landscape):
I ended up spending a lot of time watching this guy's videos on youtube, he's got quite a collection if any of this stuff intrigues you like it did me! One in particular video that really demonstrates just how quickly a finished spray painting can be completed is this one:
As a more traditional painter, myself, it's really incredible to see someone start with a blank canvas or page and one minute later have a completed piece! Another example of what feels like almost instant gratification as an artist was found here, where the artist creates an entire space cityscape in a matter of minutes:
Now I would wager that any of these paintings could be sold at a modest profit (at least!). But the final video I’m going to share with you, dear readers, is a design that I’m sure is particularly well-suited to be marketable to a wide range of people. No matter how any times I’ve seen this guy’s work, I’m still amazed at how easy he makes the various techniques look!
After watching so many videos, I was literally overflowing with inspiration; I decided to try a few of the more basic ones to start with. There was more trial and error than I expected at the onset, but once I became more comfortable with the various angles to hold the cans at, as well as the effect that both distance from the can to the page AND the amount of pressure being applied to the nozzle can produce, I felt like I had a lot more control over the finished product. This doesn’t even take into consideration the plethora of effects that can be attained by swapping out the basic nozzle with tips that can be bought in most art supply stores.
I started out with a base of Bristol board, and a few different colors of spray paint. Since I was trying to get a feel for the basics, I decided to stick with some abstract designs that could be used as background for later artwork. In the photo below, I used a scrap sheet of uncut Bristol board. First I sprayed a basic flat layer of color, then laid the scrap Bristol over top and used it to create a variety of angles and layers. Unfortunately, there was a bit of shine to the red paint I was using, and the support was too big to fit in my scanner, so I’ve shared two shots of the same image to show as much of the detail as possible, but there are a lot of subtleties that are lost in the digital translation.
This second spray painting was executed using 3 colors instead of 2, as in the last, and instead of using a straight squared edge, I cut a loose S-curve shape up one side of the scrap paper and used a similar method. I did vary my color layers a little more on this piece, and in the end I think that there is a definite difference in the overall feel.
I liked this second piece so much I decided to use it as the base/background for a collage I made for another class. I hope that the information and videos I’ve shared here will serve as an inspiration to some, and as education to the wide range of possibilities of this often unconsidered or possible unappreciated medium.
