Graphic Design Blog

Induction Day.

On my induction day at college we did a team building / get to know each other project. The brief for the project was 'Origami Safari' and the main aim was to plan and construct a stable 3D animal from limited materials. We could really only use paper, card, wire and little glue and masking tape. We worked as a group of 5 and began by discussing ideas about which animal we would be able to constuct in the time we had from the materials we  had available. We originally looked at insects such a beetles and spiders and then started to look at animals like giraffes and sea turtles. After drawing out and discussing how we would make both a giraffe and turtle we would get the best outcome from trying to construct the turtle. Once we'd decided this we then delegated the turtles different body parts between the group and began to construct a small scale prototype. My task was to creat the tutles legs, another member of the group also did this so we could compare and see which would work best. The prototype make us realise it wasnt as easy as we had anticipated. We didnt finish the small version but it let us see what we was doing wrong and what needed to be done differently. The legs and the shell were the main problems as the legs wouldnt hold the weight and the shell wouldnt take the right shape. When we moved onto the final construction we did a lot of things differently. We put strands of wire down the inside of the legs that were made of rolled up paper. This still didnt strengthen them enough to hold the shell, head and tail so as a last minute addition we had to add a block of cardbored as a stand in the center of the constuction to support it.  I think we all agreed that if we had to redo the project again we would of chosen to do the giraffe and make it out of a series of tubes. The main benefit of the project was that it got us all communicating with one another by making us work as a team.