Post Christmas Update
Christmas and New Year (and birthday) are over and done with and semester two starts next week. It’s time for an update.
The last you’d heard, I’d managed to get my hands on a souped-up machine which unfortunately didn’t work with the software I needed. I was quietly despairing at this point. The one morning, Ali, my studio manager came in and offered me an Intel Core 2 Quad with a dedicated graphics card and eight (or six) gigabytes of RAM! This was incredible. Once he delivered it to me, I connected it up, installed the software, and lo and behold, we had a winner! It worked perfectly. And then I had to go home for Christmas… So not many advancements on that front.
I still need to send out many more stickmen packs, and as time is now ticking, I’m looking more locally for participants. This shouldn’t be a major issue, but I would have still preferred to get a stickman to them as opposed to them having to come to the stickman (don’t be pedantic here!).
I’m also looking at performing some experience prototyping, but keep watching this space for more information about that.
Anyway, happy 2012!
Pack #1 Done and Sent!
After much labour and toil, I finally got the first pack sent out and I got someone, who was not acquainted with the project at all, to test out the pack! I’m quite excited now!
Right, here’s what’s happened since the last time:
I created the instructions and the message cards (see above).
I created the ‘branding’… I have the word ‘branding’ in quotation marks there because it’s very basic. It is literally just a logo of type. For now, it will suffice. I also chose to go with a monotone colour scheme to mimic the instructions of the Otamatone. It’s not particularly well designed, but it’s functional.
I also chose not to use any graphics because the nature of the project is all about how different cultures interpret things differently and I feel that using images would have different meanings to different people.
I refined the box to include a window and some printed text as well as my ‘branding’. I then attached the acetate to create the actual window and folded it all together:
I then put stickman in, along with the instructions and the message cards. This resulted in the completed pack!
What do you think? Please leave your thoughts below.
Only Smarties (boxes) Have The Answer!
As part of my cultural probes, I have to make up these little packs containing stickmen and some basic instructions. I was originally going to include a camera of type too, but disposable cameras were too expensive, and the digital cameras, which I bought from eBay, were terrible as they did not support Windows 7.
But before I can send anything out, I need something to package it all up nicely—namely, a box. And so work on a box began. I had absolutely no idea how to create a relatively strong box which could keep Stick Man safe. I thought about it for a while, bought some 3mm double ply corrugated cardboard, drew up a design in Illustrator, and got to the laser cutter. I set it going, and then realised quite a fatal error… I’d started etching a vertical line (see above).
Stick Man Mark II
After making Stick Man Mark I, I learnt a few things, and I made Stick Man Mark II. This time, I thought he should have been a little more human based so that it would be a more accurate representation of how people are and, therefore, easier for the users to manipulate into the poses they want.
