Workshop Notes

Turbine Trouble

I'm just finishing off a little cardboard curiosity to add to the download section of the website. The Cardboard Turbine is a spinning turbine powered by a set of bellows. I need an animation for the website but the usual stop motion technique won't work for this so I have created a movie clip with our small digital camera and imported it into Flash.
The first time I viewed it it looked like the turbine wasn't spinning. I had used the segmented red and yellow front as seen left. Like the wagon wheels in an old western the spokes on the turbine front were coinciding with the frame rate of the camera, the result - strobing. So, a new design for the front, this time a spiral. It works a treat!.

flying-pig.co.jp

The Japanese version of the flying pig website is still going strong. There is a recently updated section on my visits to and from Japan to see Mr Furuta our esteemed distributor. Check here for details.
You can even have fun getting a rough translation of the Japanese using the AltaVista translate tool. I did say it was rough.
The page features various photographs of myself and Furuta-san in Japan and London and of course pictures of the wonderful japanese cuisine. I have rearranged the picture on the left for artistic effect so apologies to those of you who read japanese. The text doesn't match the picture.
I've just noticed, on checking the website, that I have yet another picture on a dynamic slope. I really must stop doing that.

Print and Die

How does die cutting work? I've been converting a couple of models to die cut versions so now I know! Instead of the usual single file I have been using Illustrator to create two. One for the printing, one for the line line. From these files the print plates are created (See the section on printing) The second file, containing the die line is used to make the die. Solid lines for blades, dotted lines for fold lines. I'm not sure how dies are made but I'll try to find out.