Hasta La Ideas

Tutti Frutti! Play fruit est le nom de cette superbe série de créations réunissant de nombreux fruits de papier. Un rendu très réussi proposé par Mr.Printables, qui invite même à télécharger gratuitement les patterns de ces créations, afin que les petits et les plus grands puissent les faire eux-mêmes.

Wang I Chao creates much more than toys. The Taiwan-born, New York-based designer chooses to focus more on the creative potential of the user than the features of his toys. That’s not to say his creations are boring by any means—on the contrary, his abstract inspirations bring a greater element of imagination to the experience. We chatted with him about three of his designs that caught our eye: “Shadow Monsters,” “The Red Nose Circus” and “Belly Button Chair.” Learn what he has to say about the playtime, making toys for kids and adults and how The Little Prince inspired his designs.

Core77: What’s the most important aspect, in your opinion, to making the well-designed toy?

I Chao: I think a well-designed toy should be fun and inspirational. For me, the most important aspect of a toy is its ability to spark creativity. We can’t learn this type of thing through a textbook, so it’s best we play and find our creative sides naturally.

How do you see your own designs fitting into the modern world of toys and playtime?

It’s my goal to design toys that enable our artistic talents. I regard my design as a framework to guide and contain users’ inspirations. The framework uses storytelling to invite users into the games and at the same time, it sparks their creativity and imagination by encouraging them to make their own tale.

Aesthetics is an important and subtle influence in artistic inspirations too. When considering this, I pay great attention to the quality of my sculptural forms, and also engage them with character. The toys are not just designed for children, but also for grown-ups who enjoy novelty as well as aesthetically beautiful objects. From playability, story, to sculpture quality, I wish to design artsy toys that can be appreciated by users of all ages.

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This video has been making rounds since it hit the web last week, a pitch-perfect DIY success story: A dutiful dad hacked an open source 3D printer to create a robot opponent for his air hockey-loving daughter. Jose Julio started by building a standalone air hockey table out of plywood and old PC fans; the robot is made from standard RepRap parts—”NEMA17 stepper motors, drivers, Arduino Mega, RAMPS, belts, bearings, rods, printed pieces”—and software that he programmed from scratch. The overhead PS3 EYE camera is calibrated to detect the speed and direction of the high-viz puck based on consecutive frames at 60Hz (he originally intended to use a CMUCAM5, but it’s not yet available).

Indeed, Julio has also seen fit to document the entire process in both his native Spanish and in English, so those of you looking for a project can try your hand at crafting a better bot.

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Most of us who like building things loved Legos as a kid. There were just a few gripes: Inevitably you’d build something and run out of a particularly-sized piece, or you wished for different colors, or two pieces would become stuck together so badly that scientists at CERN couldn’t separate them.

Well folks, the future is here. Google has teamed up with Lego to release Build with Chrome, a free, browser-based version of Lego! (Works in Firefox and Chrome, I’ve not tried Safari.) You select whatever sized-piece you want and drop it into your construction with mouseclicks. It’s 3D, so you can rotate the build platform by dragging. You can change colors at will. And in the tutorials at least, the supply of pieces is unlimited.

Now I know that a large part of Lego’s appeal is the tactility, and the empowering feeling a child gets from constructing something with their grubby little mitts. But at least your pops isn’t going to step on one of these in the living room, accidentally teaching you, at perhaps too tender an age, words like “#*$&%@!!!”

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Long gone are the days of shooting stretchy rubber bands from the crook of your hand, obviously. Ukrainian designer Alexander Shpetniy has created a model that’ll give you second thoughts about the damage the stretchy bands can do. His design, Rubber Band Machine Gun (RBMG) may look like some sort of strange, modern sculptural piece, but it’s actually a pretty intimidating rubber band shooter that might be a bit more pain-inflicting than the usual finger shooter.

The fully automatic device is made of CNC-cut plywood and comes in three different finishes: light wood, black and burnt wood color. While the natural finish of the design is a welcome change from the plastic rainbow-hued toys we generally see in this genre, its capabilities are the real points of interest.

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