When we were first brainstorming ideas, we initially thought of creating a robot hand. We tried to pursue it in a couple different ways and printed/sculpted several different hand blueprints. Trying to make the hands look intricate and elegant was very difficult, as keeping track of and controlling all of the parts of a hand (the knuckles, joints, etc.) is not a trivial task. Eventually, we decided to scrap that idea and create a divided environment in the form of a divided box. The upper half represented land and its creatures, as the bottom half represented the sea. The stopping and restarting movements of the motors creates an illusion that makes each of them move or jitter and jolt to a stop.
The whole process was very time consuming because although thinking of an idea was alright, being able to execute them proficiently was much more difficult. Nicolas organized the overall structure of the project and did most of the coding job, like creating the environment, and I mostly handled the art. We had originally planned to incorporate other aspects (such as creating ridges surrounding our motor for our wires to jump up and down and move our animals), some of the logistics of the wire and the weight of the clay not adding up made that task difficult. Overall, creating a project with the Arduino for us was also new, frustrating, enjoyable, and rewarding.
Initial sketch:
Creating a blobfish:
Baking the clay with a makeshift hairdryer oven:
Accumulating creatures: