Graduated!

My graduation project has come to an end. I've passed my final exam last tuesday with (if I may say) exellent grades!
I'm quite satisfied with the final result of Virtuoso, however for me it's not quite 'there' yet. So I will continue improving Virtuoso, at least until the 21st of september, when you can check out Virtuoso at EJECT at KMT.

Green screen magic

I'm really not familiar with montaging or Adobe After Effects. But I still want to create some sort of trailer, to get people warmed up for Virtuoso. The thing I wanted most was a shot of a child conducting with Virtuoso in front of a whole orchestra instead of his livingroom. Therefore I've created a 'green screen' in the living room of my cousin today, and I filmed him. I've spend a whole evening behind the computer, and I must say that -for a first timer- the result is quite good!

Thank you Youtube Adobe After Effects tutorial guys!

Also I've tried a first montage today. I montaged it on the musical piece that is playable in the prototype (Hall of the mountain king, Grieg). Thing is, this piece is about 3 minutes long. So my montage is way too long as well. Stan (Virtuoso's orchestrator and composer) will make a shorter version of the musical piece tomorrow. Here's a sneakpeak!

Like my new logo? Just made it!

Final playtest!

I've just returned from the final playtest. Koen van Vuure, my cousin, was the tester, we tested at his (or his parents) house. I choose for Koen, because we already were quite familiar with each other (however, we don't see each other too often). So it wasn't strange for him to have me over. I also choose for his livingroom to test, because this is his natural playspot. I tried to make this testsession feel as natural as possible. I told Koen I've got a toy that would be fun for him to try. I wanted to prevent that he felt forced to like something, just because I made it.

The results were the following:

- Koen didn't know what a conductor was, but he did understand how to interact with the music. The result was that his way of moving was quite the same. I showed him a movie of a conductor later on, and his movements became more diverse, clearly inspired by the conductor.

- It took clearly too much time for the music to change, so sometimes Koen didn't feel like he was influencing the music. So the transitions in the music should be more quicker.

- The contrast between the first and second mode (there are 6 modes) are not clear enough.

- Koen experimented with quick and slow movements.

- What Koen liked most about the toy was that the music reacts on you, 'you can go high and low and then the music gets louder! And when I move very quick it becomes the most fun'. Koen clearly liked loud and up to tempo music.

- After the playsession, Koen kept humming the song he played with (In the hall of the mountain king, Grieg). So, as concluded in earlier tests: children like music with a recognizable melody).

So in short: Koen liked to play with Virtuoso, but the music needs to react even faster to his movements. That would really make the difference.

After the test we shooted some material of him playing with Virtuoso, which I will use to make a trailer with now.

Visual design officially finished!

Just attached the hinge to the two parts of the Virtuoso model, which means that model is done!
It works even better than I expected, the hinge is strong enough to prefent the cover from tipping over. And the bottom part is suprisingly stable, which prefents the model from falling over due to the heaviness of the cover. So I am very happy!

And of course I'd like to thank Stan for helping me attaching the hinge!

NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

This is bad. Today was supposed to be the day that the musicsystem and the hardware were put together in the model of Virtuoso. But the tilt compensated compass (which registrates all movements with the baton) just stopped working and is beyond repair. This means that the conducting baton doesn't work anymore and that I have to cancel the final playtest coming saturday.

Monday we'll have a new tilt compensated compass, so I hope that we have enough time monday to fix Virtuoso. But I'm afraid that there will be no final playtest, tuesday is my final exam presentation, so there is just no time left. I'm going to try and do the best I can though.

Furthermore, the model of Virtuoso is finished, I'll give you a sneakpeak!

Progress!

Today was a very very VERY busy day. I have finally managed to sandpaper all the lasercutted parts of the Virtuoso model to the round shapes of the visual design. The parts that were sandpapered today, also had some dimples that needed to be filled with MDF filler. When the MDF filler dried up, I sandpapered it again untill it was smooth.

Next step was to give two white underlayers of paint to the parts of Virtuoso that hadn't been painted yet. The other parts got another layer of white primer. When everything was dry again (which took several hours), I started painting. I choose five colors (fuchia, signal red, bright blue, lemon yellow and broken white, waterbased paint with a 'satin shine' in it).
These colors lay most close to the colors of the initial design of Virtuoso. I especially had trouble finding the right color for the pinkish color on the footplate, because the color wasn't clearly visible in the design. But once I painted the color on the footplate, the color fuchia turned out to be well chosen!


It is a quarter past three a.m. now, it's really a mess, as you can see. I've managed to give every part a second layer of color, so I think the Virtuoso parts are well coated now. The paint needs to dry for six hours until I can apply a new layer of paint on them. So it's time to sleep.

Goodnight!

"BOTANICUS INTERACTICUS": Interactive Plant Technology

This is brilliant!

Choosing colors

Model process

I'm currently sandpapering the wooden layered model so that it becomes one fluent shape. I also fill up the tiny gaps with MDF filler. This needs to dry for 2 hours and then I need to sandpaper it again.

When this is done, I will give the model its first primer of paint.
It takes some patience and strenght, but you can already see how good it looks!

Elements of features of affordances, a quick reference sheet

This is the result of my research; a quick reference sheet that you can use when you are visually designing the features of an object that make an affordance. 

Written by a kid

Sit back and relax and watch these awesome movies of Written by a Kid, where children make up a story that will be made into a short film! Brilliant!

Lasercutting

The lasercutter just finished the last slice of wood (number 84 out of 84).
I'm happy I was allowed to finish this in one day, it took me 12 hours.
Tomorrow I will put the slices together.

Updates - Musicsystem, Technical, Model

I'm back from holidays since a week, and Project Virtuoso hasn't been standing still.

Than made a music system in Max MPS, this movie gives you a sneakpeak of last Tuesdays version. At the moment the music can be influenced using an Ipod touch. The music system still needs some balancing, which Than is working on now.

Also Mikail and Raymond have been working on the conduction baton. Using the technology of Adruino, we are now able to measure up/down, acceleration, tempo, and left/right. Pointing left and right is not entirely done yet. It is a challenge to decide when somebody is really pointing left or right, or just waving with the baton from left to right. Therefore Mikail and Raymond are now programming a system where there is counted how long somebody is pointing left or right to decide if somebody is pointing or just waving.

I have been working on the model of Virtuoso, which is also a real challenge. 3D printing such a big object is way too expensive and it is also hard to find a 3D printer that can print that big. Therefore I decided to make a model out of layers of wood, using a lasercutter to cut the wood in the right form, put all of the pieces of wood together, sand down it down to the round form. After making the base, I will give it another layer of epoxy. After this layer I will paint the model in the pattern design I've designed for it. Above this layer of color goes a finishing gloss coat.

At the moment I'm working in Adobe Illustrator, making all the layers. It is a lot of work, I have to make the layers in the right size (the musicbox is going to be 32 by 26 centimetres), in the right shape (for this I've created a 3D model in Autodesk Maya as a base for the shape), I need to consider and design technical aspects (how do you open it, where do I put the speaker, how does the light work, where do I leave space for the Arduino).

After doing all of this I also need to make a horizontal design of every slice (there are 84 layers). This is how the wood will finally be cut. The lasercutting will be done next Tuesday at Fablab Amersfoort.

So that's my update for the last three weeks. I hope to show you the model next week!

The visual design of Virtuoso

This is how Virtuoso will look. 

The next step is to look at how it will work functionally.

Inside design sketches

I've first made a lot of pencil sketches to find the right shape of the inside of the musicbox.
I've found a shape that fits very well with the music theme, it reminds me of a musicstandard.
So I made it in photoshop and made several visual iterations of it to find the best pattern.

First model of Virtuoso

Today I've finished the first model of Virtuoso. It's not very accurate, as you can see, the upper part should be flatter. I've made it with Artiste clay and aquarel by hand. Next step is to make this more shiny. Maybe I'm going to improve this model with some transparent nail polish to see how it will look then.

I'm still working on the design of the inside of the musicbox, which I hope to finish tonight. In the weekend I will create an illustrator design file where I will decide the dimensions.
So little by little I'm starting with the making of the model. To do this, I will be making some more tests (this was test one - form), next time probably with wood and finishing layers.

Inside of musicbox

The visual design on the outside is done. But now I have to design how the musicbox will look when it is opened. I hope to finish this soon, so that I can continue with creating a real model of it!
I'm trying to put some elements of a concert room in it, because the upper part of the musicbox is the part that gives visual feedback and therefore that is where you watch and pointing at. So I'm looking for some kind of form that connects the style of the toy with the looks of a concert room or an orchestra.

Test test

The children were very enthousiastic about the visual designs. Again I've had two groups of four children, both containing two boys and two girls per group.
As predicted, the girls loved the pink designs, but also the original design of Virtuoso and the star shaped one. It was surprising to see that they also liked the blue version I designed for the boys.
For the boys, they loved the star shaped one and the blue one. The boys also liked the one bottom right,  because it had green in it. 'We really like the colors blue, red, green, yellow and orange, because that are boycolors', was their answer on why they liked it. So maybe I should try to add a little more green or even orange for the design of the boyish version of Virtuoso.
Both group also liked the rainbow colored design. But I am not too fond of that one myself.

Most important thing is that the children were attracted to my visual designs. I think it's time now to choose three and finish the inside of the product as well.

(Interactive) Music helps development baby

dutch http://www.nu.nl/gezondheid/2807483/muziek-helpt-ontwikkeling-baby.html
english http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120509123653.htm
english http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/245312.php

A group of 6 months old baby's followed music classes for half a year.
There were two kind of classes; half of the group of baby's followed interactive classes, where they were taught songs and played percussion-instruments with their parents. The other half followed passive lessons, where they listened to music during play.

The children who took part in the passive lessons didn't really show any difference after half a year. But the children who participated in the interactive lessons turned out to laugh more, were less stressed and communicated better.

They pointed to objects and waved more than the other children and were less sad when something didn't went the way they wanted.

Also the interactive lessons changed their reaction to music. Baby's who followed the interactive lessons were more sensitive to the structure of music.

Laurel Trainor, director of the Institute for Music and the Mind of the McMaster University stated: "Babies who participated in the interactive music classes with their parents showed earlier sensitivity to the pitch structure in music. Specifically, they preferred to listen to a version of a piano piece that stayed in key, versus a version that included out-of-key notes. Infants who participated in the passive listening classes did not show the same preferences. Even their brains responded to music differently. Infants from the interactive music classes showed larger and/or earlier brain responses to musical tones."

Even though the infants listened to music in both music classes and all infants also listened to a similar amount of music at home, the biggest difference between both classes was that one class experienced an interactive exposure to music.

Study coordinator Andrea Unrau concluded, saying:

"There are many ways that parents can connect with their babies. The great thing about music is, everyone loves it and everyone can learn simple interactive musical games together."

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I believe this really shows the value of letting children play and interact with music at an early age. This is why (real) music-toys as Virtuoso are so important for the development of children. It is not only fun, but playing and interacting with music can stimulate development of communication, take stress away, make children more at ease (instead of all the over-energized toys that only make them over-energized and stressed - like the effect of sugar) and children can create a feeling and affinity for culture and music.

More visual iterations..

The other shapes weren't as popular with the kids as the original shape, which had my preference as well, so I decided to not put too much effort in them and continue with the design of the original shape. I want to design at least three different 'skins' for Virtuoso, so that children (or their parents) can choose their favorite and by that create their first bond with their Virtuoso. I've created four designs now that are definitely in my 'yes'-list. One is based on a star shape, one is based on a cake, one is based on a eastern city and one is based on a mushroom. I'm in love. Now I must find out if my test-panel is in love too.