Spooktacular Light Design

This week we made fantastic light designs. We challenged the kids to do this using only foil, pipe cleaners and a hand held torch or a string of fairy lights. By constraining the materials available, we forced them to explore the possibilities and limits of what you can do with foil -squish it, mould it, fold it, fan it, puncture it etc.

When we turned off the lights in the studio, the fun began. There was lots of exploration of the qualities that foil might contribute to the design- whether the light is reflected by it, passing through a space in it or distorted by an edge of it.

This cat alien has devilish red ears and waggling foil legs and is wound round with pumpkin-coloured fairy lights. 

These ghost masks have internal lights shooting out of ghoulish eyes (and blood streams for the top light).

Some of our students made sculptures-moulded with foil-to project interesting shadows -this one's a witch -onto the wall.

Others were entranced by the reflective properties of foil and built a giant space age plane with tiny magical animals flying on the top of the fuselage.

This student made a series of horseshoe shaped ornaments, with candy cane like pipe cleaner stripes, this became a visually appealing garland.

This lantern box made good use of a coloured scaffolding and cast an interesting shadow.

In this team effort, our designers made a large flower with illuminated squirly stamens in the centre and a twining decorated vine. Nice job!

Kinetic Sculpture

In our first session of Fall workshops at Artscape Youngplace and in the second week at the TP Loblaw K Club we issued a mash-up design challenge, asking the kids to come up with a kinetic sculpture that is also a sign. 

After a planning phase, we gave the students a table full of materials and the ever popular glue guns and they set to building their prototypes.

Quite a few of our young designers made classic mobiles. This bedroom sign used some interesting sculptural elements. 

This sculpture took inspiration from Minecraft and used a nice range of materials to point the way.

We liked the striking use of colours and the strong graphic design of this video game sign.

In this idea, the student made a table-top yard sale sculpture mounted on a flexible base with wobbling faces on either side.  

And this kinetic sculpture had a windmill feature made of plastic spoons, that could either be wind-driven or could be hooked up to a motor to make it spin. 

Both these designs used a full range of materials and included lots of interesting elements. 

This sculpture sign was for a skateboard store. The sign was mounted on a skateboard that moved down a ramp.  A fully thought out prototype! 

Spooktacular Light Design

This week we made fantastic light designs. We challenged the kids to do this using only foil, pipe cleaners and a hand held torch or a string of fairy lights. By constraining the materials available, we forced them to explore the possibilities and limits of what you can do with foil -squish it, mould it, fold it, fan it, puncture it etc.






When we turned off the lights in the studio, the fun began. There was lots of exploration of the qualities that foil might contribute to the design- whether the light is reflected by it, passing through a space in it or distorted by an edge of it.

The pipe-cleaners were sometimes used to sculpt a beautiful illuminated object  (like the wire light sabre at the top) or this intricate fairy garden design below.

Sometimes the interplay between the light and the shadow it cast animated its surroundings. Some of the kids were fascinated by this idea and designed intricate shadow boxes and light projectors.   

One wire sculpture evolved into a carnival  over the course of the class, with a dinosaur, two riders and dangling shapes casting a playful scene onto the wall.  Another, a green bear shadow maker.


This flower-like projection (above) was developed, by moulding the foil onto the face of the torch and experimenting with the effects at different angles.

One design team decided to pursue a Halloween theme.  Here is their iridescent pumpkin parade (left).

It took serious collaboration to come up with this installation!