Tin Woodsman Clockwork Heart - Design

As part of our first project for college we where given free rein to build anything.  Normally people build something that is from a movie/game/real-life but for this one I decided to create something that was a reimagining of a prop.  My love/obsession with The Wizards of Oz was what gave me the idea.  I deiced to create a new heart for the Tin Woodsman.  Something that would be seen in a modern day version of the film.

With this project everything is about managing our time.  We have 9 weeks till the hand in date so each weekend needed to be planned out.  I set out the first two weeks of this project for design as this was something I had to come up with from scratch and each element had to have form and function   I couldn't just stick what every I wanted together because at the our lectures would be asking me "Why is this like this" and a response of because I liked it wasn't going to be good enough.

 So to start I need to figure what was the purpose of the heart, what I would be designing into it and its scale.  I knew I wanted clockwork ticking away inside, a key hole and for it to be made out of both Tin and Wood.  I went online and googled wood and tin and heart in as many different ways as I could think of and collect all the images that sparked something inside my brain.

I started off with the stereotypical heart shape you see on cards leading up to February 14th.  Pushed and pulled it in every way that was artistic thinking that this was going to be shape I use it just needs some tweaks   I was very wrong but we shall get to that one later.  I also looked into Artificial hearts for inspiration but they where to abstract and ugly for that I was thinking.

I did a quick run through of all the different way the heart could be shaped as well as looked into the design of the key hole.

and the key.

It was about this time in my research I found an drawing of a realistic heart but make from wood and metal and my brain went "this".  From here on out I started pulling my designs away from the stereotypical heart shape and more towards organic hearts, but not just human heart.  I looked into the design of a number of different animals to see it there was a shape I like but still would be recognised as a heart.

Each animal has a huge different shaped heart and after a while of sketching I ended up using a human heart as my main point of reference.  Again I kept the three main ideas of the build as I sketched.  Tin, wood and clockwork.

This was done over and over again, page after page

after page after page. . .

after page. . . you get my point.  I was much happier with the way this design was going.  More important I was glad I managed to get away from the stereotypical heart shape that I was stuck on at the start of the design project.

Wires running over the surface of the heart will give the impression of the veins and arteries that cover the human heart.

I need to work out how much space the internal clockwork would need as well as the power supple, motor and switch.  Since the heat was going to be built out of layers of wood I though keeping it in two half's until the finial build would work best.  We have access to the laser cutter in college so making cogs would be a lot easier.  Here I worked out how much I would need to caver of from the inside as well as the shape and set up of the cog wheels.

And here is a small mock up of the heart sharp carved from foam with the placement of the tin places and hole for the clockwork drawn on.

The Project is due on November 19th so my next post shall be about the building of the heart.

Enjoy

-M