Freedom Bird — A Laser Cutting Creation
In the third episode of “Mastering Prototyping Techniques”, we came across another prototyping technique — laser cutting. With showcasing our ability of laser cutting in mind, we were tasked with creating an object of our own idea using laser cutter. Having previous experience in laser cutting thanks to personal projects, I found this process to be particularly joyful. You would find this episode to be slightly different from the past episodes — Instead of focusing on practicing the prototyping technique, I focused more on the process of conceptualization in this episode. Without further ado, let’s find out what happened in this episode!
Design
initial idea formation
In the process of creation (per my experience), the act of building it is usually not the hardest. The hardest part is to know what you want to build. Designers have termed this “knowing” process to be ideation. When I started to build this project, I extracted from what I liked and saw what I could come up with. Instead of merely thinking, I sketched my thoughts out during the process. Below are some examples of my quick sketches of my thoughts:
The sparkle of idea — grab it!
After sketching things out as shown above, I found that I was really fond of the idea of a cage, because I could potentially put things inside the cage to increase the expressiveness of the object. However, I did not really want a normal cage with objects such as birds in it, because it would be too normal. Out of nowhere, the idea of a clock came into my head. This was a very interesting thought to me as it differed from everything I drew above. I grabbed that idea and started to conceptualize ways to combine the clock with the cage. Of course, I sketched it out during the conceptualizing process!
What is this clock-cage thing?
At this stage, I did not know what would the clock-cage represent. It was merely an interesting idea to me — it is not just a cage or a clock, it is a clock-cage! However, as you can see in the sketch, two of the pillars were “broken” and sticking out. That was because I was thinking maybe I could put something inside the cage, and thus I left the cage “open”.
Further conceptualizing — what does the object represent?
Upon finishing the initial ideation, I stopped sketching and started to think about what clock-cage represented. In order to organize my thoughts, I presented this idea to one of my peers. After describing the clock-cage object, I said to my peer “I liked the object idea, but I do not know what I want to represent out of it.” My peer answered “well, why don’t you combine your philosophy background in it? You can present something deep from it.” That sentence instantly stimulated my brain and I suddenly realized the clock was static because it would be made from paper. Then, I thought to myself, “Can I represent the cage to be a space where time is static?” Looking at the broken and open cage, I said “what if I put a bird in it and depict the exact moment of the bird flying out of the cage? The cage could represent barriers or censorship and the bird could be us.” The name of the object then naturally flew out of my brain — freedom bird!
Build
Construct the vector file from illustrator
After building the idea, I started the building process. First, I typed in “flying bird” in Google Image and found the bird picture that would represent my concept. I quickly found one and put it on illustrator for outlining.
For outlining, I chose to use pen tool to trace around the bird on the artboard. There are other methods such as using the built-in image trace method, but I believe this is only a matter of personal preference. I did not draw out the legs of the birds because I thought the focus was on its wings, and thus the legs would be unimportant. Instead, I planned to used two rectangular cut-out chipboards to support the bird.
Simplifying the design
Just as I was about to start outlining the cage, I revisited the sketch and found that the top part of the cage was rather unnecessary. To represent the concept of “breaking through barriers”, having branches surrounding the bird was enough. Further, the clock could be moved and served as the base of the entire design. This way, I believed the design would be more interesting because of its subtlety.
Cutting them out — using the laser cutter & accidents
After sketching the objects out, the only step left to do was to import it into the laser cutter and let the machine do its magic. However, when cutting the pieces out, I continuously encountered problems in the scaling of the slots of the bird. Despite the fact that I set the width of the slot of 0.6 inch, the width went above the width. That cost me a significant amount of time to troubleshoot. By the time I finished troubleshooting the width issue, I did not have time to cut out the cage. Although disappointed, I created a 3D model of the freedom bird to showcase the concept.
Critique
what did people say about my design?
After cutting the design out, I presented it to my peers and allowed them to provide me with feedback. They put their feedback in note cards and kindly left it on my table. In general, my peers liked the shape of the bird. They commented that the form made it look like it was about to fly. They also enjoyed seeing the details of different layers in the wings. However, they would prefer seeing the actual legs of the bird. Of course, I did not have the chance to showcase the full concept of the freedom bird to them!
Conclusion
In conclusion, I think this design process went pretty well in terms of ideation and concept development process. However, I learned that implementing the concept using laser cutter takes slightly more time than I think it would. Next time, I would leave more time on the implementation of the design!
That is it for this episode. Thank you for reading and stay tuned for the next one!
