The week ahead

Tomorrow will see the arrival of the external assessors and they will be busy doing the rounds of the final year work, once they’ve finished it’ll be Tuesday, final year results day (4.15pm to be exact), and I feel a bit like the ‘accused’ waiting on a verdict. What that verdict will be I don’t know, but I’ll post it late Tuesday evening, I’m working ’til 9 that night.

Thursday evening is ‘Industry night’ when invited guests of the University get a preview of the degree show and after that the jewellers are going out for some food and banter.

Friday is the degree show opening night when the friends and families of final year students come to DoJ to have a look at our work, what my friends and family will make of my plastic prototypes amongst the shiny offerings of my talented year group I don’t know, maybe I’ll be waiting on that verdict with the same trepidation as the results, maybe more-so.

The show opens to the public on Saturday 21st May and is on ’til the following Sunday, details here

This week-end I’ve been playing around with Rhino in a non-jewellery way. I’ve been doing some designs for an EMA jewellery RFID scanner.

Middle of April

It’s been a while since my last post, I’ve been a bit lost.

I lost the thread of what I was trying to achieve with my final year work and started to move away from my concepts and tried to produce finished pieces of work. I think it began when I won a Goldsmiths award, that meant I was going to have to produce a piece in precious metal when I hadn’t planned using any, this then shifted into the other pieces I was working on and before long I’d fallen into the ‘shiny pretty things’ for degree show mindset. I spent almost a week in the design studio and workshop surrounded by half finished pieces of silver work not really sure where they were going  and changing things about them as I worked.

After discussions with tutors I’ve ditched the silver pieces, apart from the Goldsmiths effort, and have gone back to concepts, rapid prototypes and renders.

There’s a little over 3 weeks ’til assessments, I’m waiting on Shapeways RP orders and have started to make up posters which show a graphical representation of my dissertation and EMA jewellery concepts.

Another post in the next couple of days about help from a company who have loaned me QR code reading equipment.

March Update

I’ve posted a couple of updates on the final year blog in the last few days, on the box brooch page and the RFID ring page. This week I’m waiting on some RP models of the RFID ring (image below) from Shapeways, silver from Cooksons and the cast box brooch from Niagara Falls, all should be here by Friday.

Box Brooch

I’ve finalised plans to have my first degree show piece cast this morning, it’s an updated version of the box brooch I submitted as my Goldsmiths entry and a .stl model has been sent to Niagara Falls casting company which should be ready early next week. There are changes to the rear of the brooch, and I’ve reduced the depth of it but the changes enhance the design. I now need to get a Cooksons order done so I can make the brooch rear plate and begin a couple of other pieces.

Renders and an update on the design will appear on the final year blog later today or tomorrow and photos of the piece will appear after assessments.

Last week and the next week or so…

So being successful in the Goldsmiths competition means I will be making at least one piece of jewellery from precious metal, which will be silver.

The box brooch from the previous post will be created in the very near future. Over the next few days I’ll have to make some alterations to the CAD model because I wasn’t happy with the hinge arrangement after I got the RP model model back, then I’ll get a wax 3D printed and then hopefully get the piece cast. In most cases it’s usual to get a mould made to create the wax from and allow multiple copies to be made, but because this is a one-off piece I can’t justfy (or afford) the cost of that.

Also last week I was in touch with a company which specialises in RFID technology, they’ve agreed to sponsor me by lending me the equipment I need to produce the interactive RFID concept. This is a major boost for me because without help like this It would be impossible for me to afford the technology, there will be (much) more on this later.

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Box Brooch RP model

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Back to Uni

Monday (17th) sees us back to Dundee, we’re straight back into it with a deadline on Wednesday for personal statements and a peer review on Thursday, we also meet our external assessor the following week. Still no word on the Goldsmith bursaries, maybe that’ll be next week as well, I hope it’s sooner rather than later because I’d rather know either way so I don’t have to think about it.

The new final year blog is beginning to take off with the second project on the go, this time I’m going to use RFID technology rather than QR codes as a way of making the jewellery interactive, it’s still early days but I’m looking forward to making progress, I’m also enjoying doing things with a blog rather than sketchbooks, I’m relating more to the development process doing it digitally. The blog is set up so each project will have its own page and there are other pages showing where inspiration/ideas come from and things that might not make it past an initial idea or sketch. I’m looking forward to getting feedback about the final year blog set-up after the review on Thursday, there might be changes to the format after that!

The Masters application is almost done, I’m confident  it’ll be submitted by Monday afternoon, I just have the finishing touches to a personal statement for that to do. Monday will be quite busy but I’m looking forward to getting back to Uni and seeing everyone, and for the bacon rolls!

December Update

University is now, more or less, over for the year. Our final event, the xmas jewellery sale, finished yesterday and I think everyone sold some jewellery. I don’t know what the final total (in cash) will be but it was looking very healthy yesterday morning and sales were made right up until the close at 5pm yesterday. A big well done to all the jewellers for making a great success of it.

Over the xmas break I’m going to be putting together an application for the 2011/12 MDes program at Dundee and doing a personal statement in preparation for the visit of our exernal assessor which is at the end of January 2011. I also need to get started on work for assessments and the degree show.

In January I should find out if I’ve been lucky enough to get a Goldsmiths precious metal Bursary  award or not, the brooch design I used in my competition entry will be cast in silver if I get a bursary, otherwise, it’ll  be made in bronze. The image below shows an initial paper version of the brooch and a rapid prototype I had done, these  images were part of the Goldsmiths competition entry.

Coming up in January we also have a peer assessment day which will be part of our mid-term review so it’ll be a fairly intense month and I think we’ll all have to hit the ground running after the break. We were also told last week that the 17th of May is results day, with assessments on the 9th and 10th, that’s not enough time surely?

I wish you all a great winter break, see you next year :-)

Acrylic ring set

Some of my 3rd year work was featured on thecarrotbox.com recently and I’ve had loads of visitors to the site because of that. Thanks for highlighting me go to Alice. The rings can be seen in the original blog post HERE and on Flickr

Seminar group

Today was my first seminar group meeting with our tutor Dr Sandra Wilson, the other group members are Audrey, Craig, Iona and Roisin. We all gave an overview of our thoughts for final year and got some feedback from Sandra and each other, peer crits have always been helpful as far as I’m concerned and I appreciate the feedback.

One issue that’s been bothering me for a long time was taken care of today. I’ve been concerned about sketchbooks and showing the development processes I’ll use this year. In the past sketchbooks have always contained a mixture of drawings, notes and photos but because I’m placing a large emphasis on CAD this year the vast majority of my development work is/will be in digital form which isn’t really suitable for sketchbooks in the conventional sense.

After the meeting today I’m happy that I’ll be able to present my development work in different formats, mainly digital with a little conventional work to show initial ideas and source.

Digital formats for presenting work will probably include screen grabs, jpgs of the Rhino environment, Power Points shows, render photo presentations (digital and hard copy) and maybe on-line galleries.

Stepping into the Future – post 2

I really enjoyed the JISC organised event yesterday, there was a lot happening and it all happened very quickly but I got a lot out of it. The thing that got me going most was getting a look at a very cheap rapid prototyping system and some other tools that could be really useful in a jewellery studio environment, here’s a summary of the event.

First up was Alan Holligan who is a Lecturer at Telford College in Edinburgh. He spoke about VLE’s and their use, or not, as a learning aid. He covered reasons why students don’t engage with VLE’s and why few of them even use their College e-mail addresses. His solution was to create a VLE in the form of a blog which students can interact with, link to their social networking sites like Facebook, comment on posts etc. Basically I got the feeling that students prefer this to a rigid VLE because it’s much friendlier and engaging.

Alans talk was very interesting, as a student at Dundee University I think they’ve probably got it right as far as myDundee  goes, apart from maybe social networking integration, although at DoJ we also have the design studies blog as a virtual learning platfom, particularly in 2nd year.

Next up were two presentations on a theme, CAD/CAM. Firstly Martin Stevens from A1 Technologies gave a talk about A1′s low cost rapid prototyping solutions for use in an educational context although they’re equally suited to a personal studio context as well, have a look around their site.

The main feature, at least for me, was A1′s BfB 3D printer, supplied ready to go for around £2000. This is really cheap but it still produces great looking models. Even better is the RapMan 3D printer self build kit, this takes the price down to around £800. Other advantages of these machines are that the running costs are estimated to be around 10% of the cost of their nearest competitor and they can use a variety of compounds to make models. We saw a plastic polymer being demonstrated but it can also use a potato starch based compound, useful for lost wax casting because it’ll burn away in the mould.

The image above is the RapMan, a roll of the polymer printing medium can be seen in the bottom of the case. The fact that the frame of the machine is transparent also helps users engage with it because they can see what’s going on. The printer uses standard .stl files to produce models. The image below shows a variety of models.

A1 also had a laser scanning set-up on display. This allows small objects to be scanned and loaded as .stl files into the accompanying software. They can then be printed to give a copy or they can be imported into 3D CAD software and manipulated as required before being printed.

Next to speak was Ann-Marie Shillito from Anarkik3D Ltd. She spoke about her Cloud9 software and haptic input device, this is bundled by A1 for £495. I’ve seen and had a wee bit of a play with Cloud9 before, the DoJ jewellery department has a complete set up. It’s very easy to use with a clear uncluttered interface and I’m hoping to get some more time on it to experiment.

If you look at the prices it can be seen that a complete 3D design system, 3D scanner and Printer can be bought for around £2000 which is really impressive considering the quality and the pricing of their nearest competitors.

Next on the agenda were hands on workshops, there were 3 to choose from and I went with a QR code (a form of 2D barcode) workshop. It was really interesting and gave examples of the use of QR codes ‘in the wild’ as well as a little about their history. It’s clear that they do have uses in education as tools to engage pupils/students and can also, for instance, help provide easier access to information for people who may have learning difficulties.

I’m discussing QR codes in my dissertation and will also be using them in my degree show, both as a source of information and in/on jewellery and other pieces.

The next presentation was by Noel Lynagh and Mateusz Cyrankiewicz. They have developed a company and on-line service called Dropr. This is an on-line site for the creative industries that allows individuals and organisations to build portfolios. It does cost to join although a small personal portfolio will be free, however, it’s best point I think is that it allows organisations (such as Universities) to buy space to showcase students portfolios. It can also be developed into an on-line community with full integration into other social networking sites. It does look really interesting and is something I’ll be investigating in the future.

I’m going to stop now, this is a long post and if you made it this far well done!