Design group 6

The Year of the Dragon 

Our group consists of four members: Alida, Signe, Sandra, and Ole-Kristian. We are all students at Vågen upper secondary school studying an Art, design and Architecture program. We chose to name our group “the year of the dragon” because in Chinese astrology the majority of us are born in the year of the dragon. The target audience for our project is people born in the year of the dragon and individuals who are interested in Chinese mythology. 3D-printing is the process of turning a digital file into a physical three-dimensional object by distributing a material layer by layer. Going into this project none of us a lot of experience with 3d printing, if any. But along the way, we learned a lot, both about familiar programs we had used before and some new ones. A mechanical toy is a toy powered by mechanical energy. These toys can perform a huge variety of motions. The project we were assigned was to make one mechanical toy each, but with a common theme and color palette. 

Ole-Kristian: I was tasked by rest of my teammates to create a Chinese dragon mechanical toy since that was our theme. I knew it would be a hard task so i tried to make it as easy as possible. I used color papers to color him and tried to put not so huge details to make it faster. I have used the 3D printer to make a handle for my mechanical toy. When i made my 3D product i used tinkered to animate it. the reason why was because i found it to be easier than Fusion. If you are a professional, want to be profesional or know how to use difficult programs then i surely recommend Fusion, but i prefer tinkered because it is easy. I have learned different things by using the 3D animation programs like how to make objects and i know how to 3D print something from scratch. I think this is a smart way to create cool designs.





Alida: I was fortunate to have enough time to make our production poster, group text and of course, my very own mechanical toy. I made a green dragon with golden details and tiny white horns, the horns being the 3D printed part. I used tinkercad to design them because I wanted something simple and precise. The body of the dragon is made using a wire "skeleton" covered in paper mache, while the head is made using sponges and paper mache, I was pleasantly surprised with how sturdy it turned out. The mechanical part is somewhat complicated and needs a lot of force to get going, but I’m happy with the motion. I learned how hard it was to make a dragon not tilt to either side and some of the challenges you have to face when your idea just isn’t working out.