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Week 1: Dreaming Up a Final Project

Overview

This is the first week of How to Make (Almost) Anything! Our assignment during this first week was to think up a final project, and try to design it in as many platforms as possible.

"Plan and sketch a potential final project. Model (raster, vector, 2D, 3D, render, animate, simulate, ...) a possible final project, compress your images and videos, and post a description with your design files on your class page.

Idea

So here's the thing - I miss my partner. We've been dating for five years, and are now long-distance; she lives in New York, while I'm here in Cambridge. So I wanted to create something to give her that would make her feel physically close to me.

My idea is to give her something like a "Cuckoo Clock" - I could send a message to her little birdhouse, which would then light up, make a sound, raise a flag, reveal the bird, and print out the message on receipt paper.

So let's give designing that a go!

Step 1

The first step is to start sketching it out. I don't have a ton of experience thinking about the internals or the proper layout for things, but I made my best attempt to think about the housing. I then wanted to try to better understand the steps required for each part:

Step 2

I broke out every section and divided them into sub-steps to accomplish. Now it was time to try to put together a design.