Toy Design
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Prototyping
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Prototyping
Week 8
WEEKLY ASSIGNMENT 8Part 1: Develop your own character:- Post a scanned handmade sketch of your character in your blog and answers a few questions in this post (you don’t need to answer all the questions, just pick a few of them). You can also propose new questions and write a short description of your character (~ 50 words)
- In addition, post the turnaround of your character in Illustrator that you did during the class.
- Finally, write a short story about your character and imagine a kinetic element that will help you to tell this story. Draw a handmade sketch of one scene of the story and identify the kinetic element(s). Think of ways you can recreate that movement by using mechanisms and explain how it will work.
Handmade sketch
297479669303389200836173465878/.pdf
Illustrator version
Story
Mono is a magical machine, deeply perceptive and long sealed in slumber deep within an ancient castle. He possesses the uncanny ability to sense exactly what each person desires, capturing it through his dusty, rotating lens and the flash of his camera. Through his eye atop his head, people find themselves wasting time in front of him, lost in the illusions of their own longing — for love, wealth, health, family, or dreams. He sees it all, and he shows it through his eyes.
His origin is said to date back thousands of years, though no exact date is known. Legend has it that he was brought to the castle by one of its former owners during a journey abroad, in complete secrecy, never spoken of to anyone.
He has no profession — he is a magical object, but he is alive. He can move, but was imprisoned here by a powerful sorcerer long ago. His magic was too strong, and people feared his presence. He enchanted minds and scattered desire across the world, much like Pandora’s box.
His favorite pastime is talking to the spiders that weave webs on his body. But the spiders never answer.
Over his lifetime, he has heard countless songs, all softened by the echoes within the castle’s stone walls, adding a hazy beauty to every melody. His favorite is Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra — The Thieving Magpie overture — a piece that fills the vast corridors with exquisite joy.
He has not seen much of the world. Regrettably, he has spent thousands of years in this cathedral, visited only by a few who have snuck in, searching for him.
There’s little that frightens him — perhaps only his own desires. The word he despises most is “desire”, because he may never truly know what it is he wants the most.
The story I’m writing is about a student from a magical academy who accidentally wanders into the castle and encounters the legendary Mono. Due to an unintentional activation, Mono reveals to him the world of his innermost desires — wealth, beautiful women, power. Overwhelmed and intoxicated by these illusions, the student becomes addicted and unable to escape.
Kinetic's mechanism works like this: when you rotate the camera, the eye flips and eventually stops at a certain position, revealing your desire. I believe the mechanical principle behind it involves gears, rubber bands, and limiters. The camera acts as a rotating handle, the eyeball as a gear disk. On the crank, there are installed limiters and gears. As you rotate the handle, the gears turn and drive the disk to rotate, setting the eyeball in motion. When the limiter catches the gear at a certain point, the mechanism stops — revealing a specific pattern or symbol on the surface of the eye.
For the laser cut, I will post the picture as soon as possible.