Group Project: Ender Dragon

The final project for the semester was to design and fabricate product packaging in groups. I was fortunate to be paired with some very talented students, Cathleen and Sofiya. They were both super capable and talented in the Design phase of the project. I've had many struggles with rhino this semester, so I was grateful to have a bit of a break on that front. We had a little brainstorming sesh and concept generation in class. At first I suggested creating the paper model based on the castle project. That proved to be a little too complicated, so I then suggested thinking about another well liked Minecraft character. the Ender Dragon was the first, and most enthusiastic response. My super smart group mates took off with the design aspect of the project, choosing to work from home. After in class check ins and discussions were had, we all met up in the Thing Tank to assemble the paper model. Fabrication of this design was difficult, to say the least. Small tabs to connect the shapes, trying (quite successfully) to not get glue everywhere. After a long sesh we had accomplished navigating 2D cutouts from the laser cutter and had fashioned a terrifyingly accurate model of the dragon. Great success! Unfortunately the dragon wings didn't make the "cut." This was a great project for some hands on work. with so much technology on hand, actual fab skills will definitely get left to the side. Also, certain fabrication challenges are not immediately apparent  when designing with Rhino. The aforementioned glue everywhere situation, for one. But also, when gluing all these tabs together, working from one end to the other, the paper or cardstock will start to strain and pull away undoing any progress. Super stressful when you're trying to do a thing. Lessons were learnt 👍