#robotproject

This was the end film we made as a group, with me (Griffin), Glyn, Oliver and Ian working together with our different robots to create a film where our creations build up a small tower of blocks. Overall it turned out well, but we had a little trouble with some of our robots like mine having trouble staying together. So hopefully in future if I do stop motion again that I build a more robust design with materials better suited for moving.

These are the references I used for my robot “Slicker” to help inform my design choices when creating him.

While creating my robot designs, I found inspiration through the silhouettes of different mechanical based robot designs I found online such as the ATAT from Star Wars taking inspiration from how the legs work and the base for the main body, this was originally going to be my main robot design I was to make however during the design process and my sketch work I found better inspiration from the way Japanese farmer hats looked and wanted to incorporate that into a robot design which inevitably became a rain coat with a nice large Japanese styled raincoat hat. However, for the ATAT inspired design I was going to give him a large light bulb for his eye that would shed light on all that he looked at and was to be called “The Watcher”. I was told by a lot of people it reminded them of the lamp shade from Pixar animation which I used in some of my sketches to help inspire ways that I could make him walk around like, making him walk in a very exaggerated and cartoon like style and seeming interested in everything he found as if the world was alien to him. I was going to make the head shape from a tin can that would hold the light bulb in place, and using cardboard for his neck, body and legs. And then I would use some deodorant can lids for his feet so I could use the press down mechanism to give his walking a bit of weight to him, and because the shape in my opinion would help support his overall size being rather tall due to its original inspiration. However, I ended up not creating this simply because I found myself struggling to re-create his legs and didn’t think he would stand straight due to it’s design so I kept to something I felt I was better suited for making as I have little experience model making let alone creating a fully functioning model suited for animation.

  As for the raincoat robot I named him “Slicker” which was another word for “a raincoat made from smooth material” which I thought suited him very well while I made him, Slicker would be a little robot fisherman who would fish for mechanical parts either from the fish being made of some mechanical parts of just fishing in a polluted lake for parts to use to either upgrade, repair himself or to fix an old friend of his of sorts. But would have to be careful of a large fish in the lake that would throw him off his boat while he fished which would short-circuit him. He wore this raincoat to protect his body as he is a robot and is not waterproof by his own design. I was also going to give my raincoat robot a little fishing rod made from chopsticks, some string and some small metal rings that I could find to thread the string through with, and a small ball on the end of the fishing rod that could be attached with another small metal ring shaped material. However due to lack of time and my lack of constructing experience I had to scrap the fishing rod for the time being but hope to make this for future if I ever re-make my raincoat robot again. For the rest of the raincoat robot I was planning on using rolled up paper for the limbs and or cardboard but ended up using Styrofoam for pretty much his whole body as I did not know where to get other materials for the rest of him and did not think paper or cardboard would work without inevitably crushing his limbs inward without there being something solid in the middle to support it and prevent damage. For his raincoat I ended up using some cleaning cloth material I found that was yellow as it was fairly cheap and quite strong for what it was, I did have some trouble cutting it so in future maybe some better tools or material would suffice for a better outcome but for what it’s worth I found it worked quite well. Originally for his raincoat I did plan to use some raincoat tarp like material that I would cut down or some cloth or fabric that I would stitch together into a raincoat but found this would be far out of my capabilities and would be very expensive to pull off so I kept to a much cheaper alternative in order to allow the raincoat to be possible. For his hat due to the shape of his raincoat Japanese inspired farmer like hat I had to create a frame using armature wire in order to put to cleaning cloth over the hat to maintain the shape, this wasn’t the best means to creating the hat design but ultimately was the best solution due to time constrictions and keeping my expenses rather low, and overall it worked rather well and works with the size I ended up creating my robot in very well. I also used armature wire to attach his limbs to bis torso, so I could move them about freely and would allow the head to turn as well which worked rather well, however due to the material used this did make animating him very difficult as the legs inevitably kept falling apart so for future use of this design I hope to re-make him entirely using a much better suited material for a more robust design. And finally for his face I used two nails/bolts that I found in the workshop that I used for his eyes as I designed him to only have two circular eyes and no mouth because to me this seemed far more appealing as a design and didn’t think the robot would suite having any more facial features as to keep him robotic in nature, hence why I also used nails/bolts so it would hopefully be more clear to those looking at him.

   For my other robots I made my inspiration was a sort of golem guardian esc robot with a large ball for his stomach region and I decided to create a colour palette and design that was somewhat reminiscent of ancient Egyptian robes and designs to create a more interesting and appealing robot design, I simply named him “Guardian Robot” with the purpose of protecting a landmark of sorts, perhaps a temple, or would maybe protect nature from humans that threatened its inhabitants. He would mostly stand idly and guard with his blank expression only having a small circle to his eye almost like a cyclops and feels strongly to maintain the order of things in nature or to whom may have created him to begin with. I even gave him a giant orange axe to give him an interesting prop and tried tying it to his overall design as to not take away from his overall design. I was going to use a bottle cap for his head, a ball for his stomach and a bunch of rolled up paper or cardboard to create his arms and legs with some heavy metal material for his feet to keep him balanced, and this ball stomach would hopefully weigh him down as well. The axe was going to be made of some see through paper film or tinted plastic to create the blade of the axe, I was going to also make his axe handle out of chop sticks or some other cylinder like material that would be easy to carry for the robot and to not make him fall over a lot while holding it.

  I also made another design which was based on RDD2 from Star Wars which would utilise a Coca-Cola can for his main body, a bottle lid for his head, and toilet paper roll cardboard of sorts with some rubber to create tank tracks of sorts. I would make him as a robot that would travel a desert of sorts scanning the land for research, that would be gathered and then given to his master to understand the land better in this dangerous land. I ended up not creating this design simply because I did not feel too strongly about the design and found a character that I felt suited what I would like to make much more.

While creating my robot designs, I found inspiration through the silhouettes of different mechanical based robot designs I found online such as the ATAT from Star Wars taking inspiration from how the legs work and the base for the main body, this was originally going to be my main robot design I was to make however during the design process and my sketch work I found better inspiration from the way Japanese farmer hats looked and wanted to incorporate that into a robot design which inevitably became a rain coat with a nice large Japanese styled raincoat hat. However, for the ATAT inspired design I was going to give him a large light bulb for his eye that would shed light on all that he looked at and was to be called “The Watcher”. I was told by a lot of people it reminded them of the lamp shade from Pixar animation which I used in some of my sketches to help inspire ways that I could make him walk around like, making him walk in a very exaggerated and cartoon like style and seeming interested in everything he found as if the world was alien to him. I was going to make the head shape from a tin can that would hold the light bulb in place, and using cardboard for his neck, body and legs. And then I would use some deodorant can lids for his feet so I could use the press down mechanism to give his walking a bit of weight to him, and because the shape in my opinion would help support his overall size being rather tall due to its original inspiration. However, I ended up not creating this simply because I found myself struggling to re-create his legs and didn’t think he would stand straight due to it’s design so I kept to something I felt I was better suited for making as I have little experience model making let alone creating a fully functioning model suited for animation.

 As for the raincoat robot I named him “Slicker” which was another word for “a raincoat made from smooth material” which I thought suited him very well while I made him, Slicker would be a little robot fisherman who would fish for mechanical parts either from the fish being made of some mechanical parts of just fishing in a polluted lake for parts to use to either upgrade, repair himself or to fix an old friend of his of sorts. But would have to be careful of a large fish in the lake that would throw him off his boat while he fished which would short-circuit him. He wore this raincoat to protect his body as he is a robot and is not waterproof by his own design. I was also going to give my raincoat robot a little fishing rod made from chopsticks, some string and some small metal rings that I could find to thread the string through with, and a small ball on the end of the fishing rod that could be attached with another small metal ring shaped material. However due to lack of time and my lack of constructing experience I had to scrap the fishing rod for the time being but hope to make this for future if I ever re-make my raincoat robot again. For the rest of the raincoat robot I was planning on using rolled up paper for the limbs and or cardboard but ended up using Styrofoam for pretty much his whole body as I did not know where to get other materials for the rest of him and did not think paper or cardboard would work without inevitably crushing his limbs inward without there being something solid in the middle to support it and prevent damage. For his raincoat I ended up using some cleaning cloth material I found that was yellow as it was fairly cheap and quite strong for what it was, I did have some trouble cutting it so in future maybe some better tools or material would suffice for a better outcome but for what it’s worth I found it worked quite well. Originally for his raincoat I did plan to use some raincoat tarp like material that I would cut down or some cloth or fabric that I would stitch together into a raincoat but found this would be far out of my capabilities and would be very expensive to pull off so I kept to a much cheaper alternative in order to allow the raincoat to be possible. For his hat due to the shape of his raincoat Japanese inspired farmer like hat I had to create a frame using armature wire in order to put to cleaning cloth over the hat to maintain the shape, this wasn’t the best means to creating the hat design but ultimately was the best solution due to time constrictions and keeping my expenses rather low, and overall it worked rather well and works with the size I ended up creating my robot in very well. I also used armature wire to attach his limbs to bis torso, so I could move them about freely and would allow the head to turn as well which worked rather well, however due to the material used this did make animating him very difficult as the legs inevitably kept falling apart so for future use of this design I hope to re-make him entirely using a much better suited material for a more robust design. And finally for his face I used two nails/bolts that I found in the workshop that I used for his eyes as I designed him to only have two circular eyes and no mouth because to me this seemed far more appealing as a design and didn’t think the robot would suite having any more facial features as to keep him robotic in nature, hence why I also used nails/bolts so it would hopefully be more clear to those looking at him.

  For my other robots I made my inspiration was a sort of golem guardian esc robot with a large ball for his stomach region and I decided to create a colour palette and design that was somewhat reminiscent of ancient Egyptian robes and designs to create a more interesting and appealing robot design, I simply named him “Guardian Robot” with the purpose of protecting a landmark of sorts, perhaps a temple, or would maybe protect nature from humans that threatened its inhabitants. He would mostly stand idly and guard with his blank expression only having a small circle to his eye almost like a cyclops and feels strongly to maintain the order of things in nature or to whom may have created him to begin with. I even gave him a giant orange axe to give him an interesting prop and tried tying it to his overall design as to not take away from his overall design. I was going to use a bottle cap for his head, a ball for his stomach and a bunch of rolled up paper or cardboard to create his arms and legs with some heavy metal material for his feet to keep him balanced, and this ball stomach would hopefully weigh him down as well. The axe was going to be made of some see through paper film or tinted plastic to create the blade of the axe, I was going to also make his axe handle out of chop sticks or some other cylinder like material that would be easy to carry for the robot and to not make him fall over a lot while holding it.

 I also made another design which was based on RDD2 from Star Wars which would utilise a Coca-Cola can for his main body, a bottle lid for his head, and toilet paper roll cardboard of sorts with some rubber to create tank tracks of sorts. I would make him as a robot that would travel a desert of sorts scanning the land for research, that would be gathered and then given to his master to understand the land better in this dangerous land. I ended up not creating this design simply because I did not feel too strongly about the design and found a character that I felt suited what I would like to make much more.