At the High School, the Design Studies courses 15/25/35 (grades 10, 11 and 12) are comprised of five different modules, one of which is 2-D Design. In this module, students learn and apply concepts such as the Principles and Elements of Design, Color Theory, layout design, typography, as well as differing tools to create such designs.
I am always looking for ways to intertwine the modules of the course(s). Trying to effectively deliver instruction for 5 modules in one semester requires a program designed with an educational coherence, allowing students to construct and link design ideas and concepts. Many of the projects I have the students work on span two to four different modules, essentially trying to ‘kill two birds with one stone’.
The 2-D design module has consistently been a thorn in my ‘digital’ side. Sure, I’ve been able to have students produce strong 2-D design pieces and link them to another module, but I consistently struggled in having the students truly utilizing the 2-D designs in the other modules. In the past, I’ve had students sketch/draw designs in their sketchbooks. We would do a variety of tasks with these designs to study things like color theory. Eventually students would select the version of their design they liked the best to be used as the image on a skateboard deck. The skateboard would later be created as a CAD model for part of their CAD module. It was a great task, but as a class we struggled when it came time to apply the image in our CAD model. Students would either have to take a picture or scan of their drawing so they would have a digital image, or they would try to digitally recreate their design in a program like Paint or Autodesk’s Sketchbook Designer. We have some Bamboo tablets for the students to use, but they were usually unable to recreate the design in the same quality as they could in their sketchbooks. As we were usually crunched for time at this point, students didn’t really get the time to explore the Sketchbook Designer software and realize the power it had. The end result was students wanting to use an image they found online, rather than the one they created, and becoming so frustrated with the software they didn’t want to use it again.
Rather than skateboards, the next year I decided to run with a Lego Mini-figure project. Students had to sketch and design different mini-figures with different color schemes and accessories (2-D design). They built the mini-figure in CAD (CAD module) and created the character they had designed. This was a little more successful, but students still had issues with some of the clothing designs etc that would be applied to the CAD model via an image. The end result was students usually dropping the image from their CAD model and leaving the model as solid colors, rather than having the intricate designs they came up with in their sketchbooks.
Fast forward to 2014. I decided that I wanted to bring back the skateboard design project. The students enjoyed it in the past, plus it was a great project. We used a series of skateboards that the students got to take apart. They measured and sketched each part in their sketchbooks (Sketch, Draw, & Model module) then move the computers to use Autodesk’s Inventor Professional to create and assemble all the parts of the skateboard (CAD module). Perfect, now what to do about the image for the skateboards deck (2-D design module)? In came POLY ART.
The popularity of Poly Art has grown in recent years, and it was something that I personally liked and was curious about creating. If you don’t know what Poly Art is, I’m sure you’ve seen it before. It involves the use of polygons to create an image. I won’t go into the history of it, but it has some links back to early game design and computer animation. I found a few tutorials online for the creation of 2-D poly art but they all involved the use of software we didn’t have access to. We do however, as an educational institution, have access to all the Autodesk products for free (previously we had to buy licenses but this has now changed!).
So I returned back to Autodesk’s Sketchbook Designer. It is an amazing piece of software that we were not making much use of because of the learning curve students had with the tablets. It operates fairly similarly to Adobe Illustrator and allows for students to work in different layers, such as a vector or paint layer(s). For the creation of the poly art images, tablets weren’t necessary. All the students need is a mouse and an understanding of how to create vectors within the software. The polygons (in this case I limited their use to strictly triangles) were created on a vector layer by joining straight lines. Students just needed to determine where they wanted their vertices (the corners of the triangles) and click away. Easy. The determination of where to put the triangles allowed us to have discussions of the differing hues of a color or values in a black and white image and talk about color schemes (both 2-D design module requirements). Essentially, students would want to create a triangle to encapsulate an area of the image that had a similar hue or value. The students started to receive feedback as to how well they made the differentiation as soon as they started applying color to the triangles. The better they were able to recognize and capture the differences (in triangles), the better their poly image looked.
I had the students produce three different images, allowing them to improve their skills and apply the theory to different situations. The first image they tried applying the poly art concepts too was one that I provided to them where the value transitions in the image were easily identified. The second was one that they did of themselves and the third was one of nature or architecture. Once they got the hang of things and started working on their personal image, the students had bought in. They were able to create something they were proud of and truly owned. Plus, now they had three images to choose from to use for their skateboard designs.
Once the project was completed, we printed the images, mounted them and put them up around the school. Each student in the class has a personal blog as an online portfolio, so they created QR codes for their blog that was included on the name tag for their pieces. I can’t tell you how great it felt to see the students gathering around and checking out the art the students created, eager to show their work off to friends.
So where do we go from here? I have always wanted to incorporate a piece of software called 3ds Max. It is used for 3-D modeling in gaming, architecture, character creation, etc. Well, one of the large concepts for this type of designing is the use and editing of polygons. Perfect. There is the link from the poly art to the 3-D modelling. Now just to teach myself how to use the software and we are good to go! Educational coherence within the class, and also from year to year as students continue down the Design Studies stream.
Jesse Classen