regarding tuesday

we are the final legs of our creation journey. I’m pretty excited. We have been making so many study models and we finally stumbled apon our finished form.

We had planned to start working on our final model tuesday night.
BUT:
our order from mcMaster Carr didn’t come in until late
we needed the heat gun which was in the main shop and the main shop was closed.
so we waiting until this morning.

BUT:
the heat guns are mysteriously missing.
a talk with trip reveals: we can use the vacuum form machine in the hallway.

>>the hallway is the site of the next saw movie. It’s creepy as hell. and you could totally be cooked in the machine. its huge. and hot.

oh. and after we finished cooking our arms trying to malt the pvc enough to form it BOTH of the midding heat guns show up.

then we mill it.
then we drill it.
oh, rubber doesn’t drill. our study models had used nylon which does.
a few moments of hammering a circle punch later and we are basically done.

we have to upload everything by 5 today though so I’ve got to get back to work.

 

 

and filming starts once the paint dries.

oops

haven’t updated in a while. but here now. 

 

We (my group and I) have been doing lots of wonderful research. We are trying to design a bar system that can attach two bikes together so that friends or families in suburban areas can be tethered safely and securely together and travel. In suburban safe roads with lower seed limits of course. 

So – the joy of riding in a car (talking and chatting with your friend and feeling that lovely sense of together) combined with the joy of being eco-friendly (woo green)

through lots of sketching and deliberation we have settled on a design. 

 

I think its pretty neat. 

 

update more tomorrow after some more work.

pin striping and mac computers

among my various classes that I’m taking here at tech is automotive restoration. 

today we learned about pin striping and wood graining. and I just wanted to say that I have a new found appreciation for my mom who is very good at faux finishes and could probably be a professional wood grainer or pin striper. I inherited all artistic abilities to speak of from my mom but I stick to sketching, oils and watercolours. 

 

also. I use a mac book pro and it hurts my wrists to type for any period of time. I love the sleek and professional look of the mac but I must say: I wish that it had a curved ramp leading up to the keys like it’s distant relative the dell has. there is just no comfortable way to type. I feel like my hands are up near my chest. and while putting a stack of books in my chair to make myself taller would possibly work.. the fact that I’m 5′10 makes that suggestion just sound ridiculous to me. 

I should make myself some padded wrist guards if I’m going to be expected to write in this thing like I am.

curious findings

so for my final project in studio my group members (mira and joyce) and I went to piedmont park to observe and interview. We decided that we wanted to focus more on roller blades/skates than on bikes because we wanted to do something different I suppose. I personally don’t bike or skate (bad falling experiences as a child… myself falling off, my pedals falling off…) but I think I’m going to start skating because everyone we talked to who was skating looked to be about 20 or 30 years younger than they actually were. no joke. it was incredible. But I’ll take the man’s advice and not skate in the fall because leaves are slippery and dangerous (I’m learning!) so perhaps next year. or way down the future when I might actually start wanting to look younger. think in my 50’s. 

We also talked to a really nice man in Skate Escape (check it out! it’s a very cool store) and we learned lots of other things too. like for instance, you can bring in your own shoe and he’ll put skates on the bottom of it if the sole is thick enough. 

Which brings me to an issue. lots of people that we talked to said that the main reason that they don’t skate is because they are so big and bulky and it’s a real pain to carry them around. in fact, the people that we talked to in the park said that they DROVE to the park and then put their skates on. rather than just skate to the park. which is slightly mind boggling. And the reason, that I had always assumed, why skates are so big is the stiff, hard plastic ankle part which I thought was to protect the ankle from breaking. 

BUT our dear friend at the skate store (and he was very knowledgeable mind you, said that he had been there for 15ish years) was attaching skates to the bottom of a regular thick bottomed tennis shoe. Which is immensely lighter and less bulky than a regular roller skate. AND he sold cute little thin walled ankle bootie type skates as well (think a ladies ice skate) 

so is it really all that important to have the thick walled ankle structure of a conventional roller skate?

I think not. 

what we want to do is to make skating easier for someone to do. not necessarily people who are already super into it. but someone like me 30 years from now who says, “what the hell, I want to look like I’m 25 again, too!”

so on to concept development/sketching stage.

welcome, lauren, to the world of blog.

this is my first post ever on a blog. exciting!

quick synopsis of why this exists: 

I have a new teacher for my studio class and he told me to make one. which is good because its hard to find time to reserve to make one if my grade doesn’t depend on it (even though it really doesn’t take that much time to do…). and maybe someone from a really awesome design firm will stumble upon me and instantly think that I am the most perfect match for their company and hire me instantly. maybe. 

but most likely I’ll just be lauren with a blog as opposed to just lauren. 

and I’m doing a project on why it’d be (perhaps) a bit better in the world if people would just not use their car every time they needed to get somewhere. 

more on that later. for now I have a test to study for and more research and work for tomorrow’s studio.