The interface project was a fun one. I decided to make a animation in which the videogame character Kirby flaps his arms in his flying motion. To start this, I searched for reference photos.
The second reference photo I found was the one I decided to base my design mostly on. I did this for the simplicity, as it would be the quickest for me to draw. I also wanted to use the tree character somehow. I thought about making it as a sort of "Flappy Bird" game element but was unsure if I would be able to implement that in time.
As for the paper craft portion of the interface project, I used this photo for reference. I wanted the user to be able to high-five Kirby and use that interaction as the switch that makes him fly.
I started by sketching some basic elements of my sprites. For the tree, I made sure to make the top have an ending point as in the original reference it does not.
After sketching my sprites, I gathered some scrap parer that I would use to create the paper craft I would use to house my circuitry.
I was very lucky to have a friend who let me borrow his drawing tablet for this project. I used this tablet and the drawing program Fire Alpaca to create all of my sprites.
The program had lots of tools that helped me make my sprite very nicely, such as this circle too you can see here which I worked with to fill out his closed mouth. This is when I finished the base copy. I did this so that I could have a exact similar starting point when creating the different frames of the animation.
From the base layer, I hand drew on the arms.
I used the color picker tool and the paint bucket tool to make it appear as though the arm was in the foreground.
I followed the same step to create the back arm, finishing the first costume of the sprite.
I got started on the up costume from the base copy as I said I would before. I made sure to try to get the arm placement in the same places as the other costumes.
After finishing the sprite costumes, I began work on the basic code structure to switch between them.
Here, you can see a test of the code switching from the down, middle and up costumes.
After lots of playing around with code, I decided I could not understand the "Flappy Bird" code style and decided to come up with a code that made sense to me. The new plan was to just make Kirby flying and keep him from falling.
Here you can a test of the above coding I spoke about. I worked nicely.
Here you can see how I started to create the paper craft Kirby.
After cutting out the main body, I made sure it would fit in the right proportions when overlaid just like in the reference photo.
I used white to give a nice highlight to the eyes and would like to think this craft came out perfect. I did have trouble getting the eyes to match evenly in size but it worked out in the end after time resizing.
As for my copper tape circuitry, I went with a simple switch. I added paper folds so that the switch had room to not always be activated.
Since I only had one circuit, wiring the Makey Makey was simple. I simply connected one side to the space input and the other side to the ground to close the circuit.
The overall setup was very simple but I felt very accomplished looking at it.
Here you can see how I connected the alligator clips to the copper tape to complete my circuit.
Finally, the finished piece. I had lots of fun with the creativity on this one and look forward to doing something similar with my Impossible Project.
