my time at the magic place

Today in Toy design we had a really nice visit from Michael Joaquin Grey.  His compelling story was quite inspiring.  He talked about his development as an artist, various obstacles, ideas generated within the context of modernism and post-modernism, and ultimately his invention of a building toy called Zoobs.

Admittedly, I walked into the class and saw Michael’s toys lined up on a table and thought, “Cool, another Lego knockoff.”  And within a few minutes of his discussion, I understood my own naivete in thinking Lego covers the ground of all building toys.  The Zoob connectors come in 5 varieties and connect in the 5 types of joints that all our bones connect in.  Mr. Grey spent years developing Zoobs in an effort to create a toy that would be able to model the living world in all its complexity.  If this sort of toy appeals to you at all, I recommend investigating Zoobs a little more.

It was pretty much one of the more epic moments at ITP this year.  I’d successfully stolen Meredith’s gun (pictured, purple) so I had a sense of confidence.  Clearly that was a false sense of confidence as she was able to procure not one but two more guns within ten minutes, and as I made my way between a safe classroom and the stairs to go grab a quick snack, Meredith popped out of a blue recycling bin and shot me in the back.  Just like that, I was out of the game.

A few classmates and I spent some time at Toy Fair last week.  It was a great overview of what the industry is putting on the shelves.

I was drawn of course to tech toys especially those utilizing solar power.  I like this company: Owi Robots.

Overall, Toy Fair was a little disappointing, which also proved to be somewhat inspiring.  I expected to see more futuristic toys, but instead left feeling like my peers at ITP are perhaps ahead of the curve a little bit.  That is, ahead of the retail curve, surely most companies have concepts in the works for the near future.

Lego in particular will be launching Lego Universe soon, and that will potentially be a game changer.

In the spirit of this week’s game for Big Games, Assassin, I watched 1985’s “Gotcha” last night.  Claaaaassic:

I’m pretty sure this movie qualifies as one that does Not hold up, so to speak.  UNLESS you saw it first as an 11 year old boy, like me, in which case it’s a total classic.

Subtitle: Maybe hope does fuel mechanisms after all.

Mike and I launched ourselves into Day 2, and Design 2 for this assignment.  (See Take 1 in a previous blog entry.)  Mr. Cohen found a nice cache of items and we jumped into a more traditional design.  After the 5 hour fail session 24 hours prior, we snickered at past mistakes as we made strides with each passing moment toward what we knew could only result in masterful success.  And, that’s a lie.  But, we did move along with a new leash on the task, knowing for sure a few things that definitely would not work.  In the picture, you can see the CD wheels, the long arm connected to the mousetrap, the inclined foam piece, and the streamlined, well balanced car.  Below is a video of our first trial with the new car. Fun assignment.

Had the good fortune to check out the always compelling Will Wright speak this evening.  It was a great talk about the history of games and where they’re headed.  Below are a few of my favorite visuals from his 300 slide presentation.

Subtitle: Report on the failure of hope as a fuel in powering mechanisms

The assignment for Mechanisms was to build a car that quickly travels 10 feet, powered only by a single mousetrap.

Mike and I set out with what I might call an inspired optimism.  We located what we thought was the ideal mechanism for this assignment, despite the fact that all our helpful hints suggested completely different designs.  We found a toy car that utilized a pull cord with teeth and a wheel.  We designed the car so the mousetrap would pull the cord straight out of the wheel-mechanism.  But, we didn’t take into account the fact that this design depends on the counterweight of (usually) a child’s hand pulling the car in the other direction, and then placing the car on the ground.  This is not allowed.  For the assignment, the car must begin stationary.

Consequently, despite 4 or 5 variations on our design, all of which involved whittling away and reducing the car to the image you see above, it never went further than 8 inches.  So, we’ll spend this evening working on PLAN B, which involves a design along the lines of every other successful mousetrap car we’ve seen, all of which have similar attributes.

The 5 hours that resulted in failure yesterday resulted in a great deal of frustration (for me anyway) both during the session and also in the hour or two after.  However, the more I thought about, the more I realized the benefits of the experience.  There were a few things I knew prior to the FAIL process, but I ignored those things.  It was as if I was convinced that my own positive thinking about the design idea would propel the car 10 feet, with swift, crisp efficiency.  But no amount of awesome thought energy could make the car go.  I thought, for example, that perhaps adding some flags to the masts would be all it needed.  Of course this was a joke, but it represents my own ability to block logic and math with hopefulness, however unrealistic the idea may be.

And so, again, we’ll head into this evening with a more successful mechanistic approach.  You know, hopefully.

Game by:
Nien Lam, Meredith Hasson, Marco Castro, Greg Borenstein, and myself

Today in Big Games we tried our hand at some novice role playing.  My group was comprised of 3 members: an Ewok reunited with the tribe, a droid with the plans for the shield generator, and me, an Ewok named Bok Bok.  Description in the pic:

For this assignment our group, Noah, Patricia, Saul and myself, was inspired by coherent shadows created by a mess of 3D stuff.  Many artists have explored this idea, (one example, here) but we thought the same process would be a meaningful and fun experience for kids.  Below is our prototyping efforts over the course of one week.  This was the first assignment for the class.

Arturo, Eric and I worked on this Rube Goldberg machine for the first assignment in Mechanisms.