I see myself as a very precise person. For a lot of my life, I saw myself as a good artist. I’ve drawn since I was around three years old, and as I drew, I found my work to become more detailed. Along with being detailed, I found my work to have better craftsmanship over time. As I started school though, I noticed that my level of detail and craftsmanship was not as good over time. In school, when we were told to make art projects or other arts and crafts things, I still worked as hard as I always did, but I had two constraints to prevent my level of craftsmanship: time and foreign materials. As I would make my creations, I wouldn’t be able to do well because I wouldn’t be able to put good effort into my work and still have the work be on time, or I wouldn’t know the materials well enough to do well on my assignments. Even if I got a good grade, I didn’t feel like I would do enough of a good job on my work. But, this year, I faced my two constraints, time and foreign materials, and I’ve gotten better at my craftsmanship by facing them. This year in STEM Foundations, I think I’ve grown in Craftsmanship.

            I think that there are two projects I did this year in STEM Foundations which I grew in Craftsmanship especially. These projects are the Frankenbot Mini-project and the Stoplight Project.

            The Frankenbot Mini-project was a project we did at around the end of 1st Quarter. The point of this project was to prepare the skills we needed to use to make our models for the Plate Tectonics Project. To do this, we were told to make a little sculpture called a Frankenbot to practice these skills. To make Frankenbot, we had to use various tools such as a drill, dremel, glue-guns and foam-cutter. To those who don’t know, a dremel is a device used to smooth rough surfaces, and it was used to help smooth the rough edges created from drilling. We made Frankenbot out of foam, duct tape and packaging tape (which, if you read my Science Reflection, you’d know that those were the things my group used to make our Plate Tectonics Model). This process took about a week. In this process, we first cut out our foam using the foam-cutters and glued them together to form our model. We cut the foam for the body and the foam for the arms. We had to use the foam-cutters in a specific way, depending on the foam-cutter. There were two types of foam-cutters, a large foam-cutter and a small foam-cutter. The large foam-cutter was a big, bow like thing with a wire that would get extremely hot. When you cut the foam with this blade, you were supposed to have one person align the wire part of the cutter to the line on the foam that you wanted to cut and you had someone else catch the wooden part of the cutter when the wire cut through the foam using its heat. The small foam-cutter was a table machine that also had a wire that would heat up. This machine was able to be used by one person, and was meant to make small cuts. I used these tools to make specific parts of Frankenbot, for example, I used the big foam cutter to cut out Frankenbot’s body and then I used the small foam cutter to cut out Frankenbot’s arms. Then I used the hot glue gun to glue the arms to the body and finally I used the drill and dremel to make the mouth and eyes. After we cut the foam, we would tape the model in duct tape. Finally, once we were completely done with cutting the foam and duct taping the model, we would finally turn in the model for a grade.

So, my first artifact is my Frankenbot model. You can see in this model that the parts of the model aren’t as good as other parts of the model. This is because of my constraint of foreign materials. You see, when I first started the model, all of the materials we used were completely new to me. I had never really done much with duct tape or foam in terms of arts and crafts. I had used packing tape occasionally, but for simple reasons, like packaging presents or sealing something temporarily. I had no time to practice with these materials, and I had a time limit to accomplish my task. So, I started using the materials to learn how they work, and I eventually learned strategies on how to use the materials and tools. For example, I learned a technique on how to put duct tape into holes. When we drilled holes for eyes into our Frankenbot, we had to also duct tape and packing tape the insides of those holes as well, but the problem was that the duct tape and packing tape would bend to make it hard to tape the insides of the holes. So, a strategy I came up with to tape the inside of holes was to use a toothpick or some other long, thin stick to hold the other end of the tape to make the tape straight. I had to use this strategy a lot in order to get my model done. This is why I think I grew in craftsmanship from this endeavor. By learning new strategies on materials that I was unfamiliar with, I had gotten better at making good work using the materials. Although my grade for this assignment was more of a B than an A, I think I learned about the materials and used those skills well enough to learn how to use duct tape, packing tape, a hot glue gun and foam effectively. So, I grew in craftsmanship by making good work from materials that I was not familiar with.

            The Stoplight Project was a project that we did in the beginning of 2nd Quarter. We worked in this project for Wellness and Fitness, but we mostly worked on it in STEM Foundations. The point of this project was to find what people should and shouldn’t eat at fast food restaurants, based upon our information on what the limits are of fats, salt and calories for our current age. To do this, we first got the information on what our limits were. I had a lot of requirements I needed to fill, from things such as the amount of calories I should have in the food to how much fat I shouldn’t have. After we got our information, did an assignment in Wellness and Fitness where we found meals that would fit our limits. In the final part of the process, we began to make our stoplights. We had very simple requirements over our stoplights, since the only point of our stoplights was to show the information and meals we came up with in Wellness and Fitness. The main rules were to show the restaurant’s logo that we were using for our meals and to use craftsmanship. More specifically for Craftsmanship, they told us to balance space and to use alignment. To those who don’t know, balancing space is when you have an equal amount of positive space on two halves of your work. That is to say, if you have a certain amount of positive space on one half of your work (for example, a picture with some texts) and some negative space (empty space) on that half, you would want to have the same amount of positive and negative space on the other half. So, when we first started making our stoplights, I made sure that the amount of positive space I had in the Poster was the same amount on either side of the work.

Anyway, my second artifact to show my growth in Craftsmanship is my Fast Food Stoplight Poster. You can see in this artifact how I used a lot of the techniques that were in the requirements in my work, for example, my balancing of positive space and the color palette. Since I haven’t explained yet, positive space is any space in the work where space is used, for example, text or images on the poster. Looking back on this part of the project, it was easier than I thought it was, but it didn’t feel as easy at the time since I met my second constraint: time. Although it is hard to show a lack of work time in artifacts, I can still see a little bit of things that I didn’t get to fix due to time constraints, like the little spaces separating the main part of the stoplight to the side lights. I think I didn’t do as well of a job on my poster due to time constraints, but the reason that I think I grew in Craftsmanship from this piece was how much I got done in the time I had. Similarly to the Frankenbot Mini-project, I realized that I had less time than I thought I needed to work on the project only after I began the project. When beginning the poster, I first focused on the more aesthetic part of the poster, the stoplight itself. After a period or two working on the stoplight, I had felt distressed from how little I got done. I hadn’t even finished the stoplight by then. At the end of the second period we had to work on the project, I made a decision to work on what I needed to first, and then to focus on the aesthetic. So, the next period I worked on the project, I focused on the more important part of the project, like adding all the text and adding the restaurant’s logo. I kept Craftsmanship in mind as well, implementing balance, alignment and the color palette. The color palette is when you use specific colors in a piece of work, almost like a pattern. Color palettes are usually either colors that go well together (like green and blue) or colors that are opposites (like purple and yellow). My color palette was the colors of the restaurant’s logo, so that the colors would stay consistent. Anyway, by making a decision to work on the important stuff first, I could fix my stoplight and give my poster a better look to it. After getting all of the required stuff done first, I had enough time to work a little bit on the aesthetic part of the project. At the end of the project, I didn’t get the best score, but I got a good enough score on my poster to feel proud about the work I’ve done. By facing time, I think I’m more prepared for similar situations like this where I have to get a certain amount of work done in a time limit. So, I didn’t grow in Craftsmanship by making good work in a time limit, but by learning how to have good work in future situations by focus on the most important parts of a project instead of the aesthetic parts in a time limit.

            I feel better about my Craftsmanship now, and I’m glad that I grew in it more. I must say, I felt over time that my Craftsmanship skill was getting worse, since I would feel overwhelmed by work and would only do enough in my work to get a good grade. This year though, I think testing my skill in Craftsmanship helped me. By working with foreign materials in the Frankenbot Mini-Project, I think I feel more skilled in foreign materials like tape or foam cutters, and I think that I’m more open to using materials I’ve never used before. By working under a time limit in the Fast Food Stoplight Poster Project, I think now that my skill in making good work under a time limit has improved, if not my skill to plan on how to make good work. I think that these skills, along with other skills I use in the future, will help me for my future endeavors (such as high school, but maybe not college) and more importantly my dream career. My dream career is to become an animator and/or illustrator when I grow up, and I know that having either of those jobs or both of those jobs will be difficult to do without Craftsmanship. I’m glad that I’m more open to new materials and can now make better work under a time limit because I know that animation and illustrating require both of those skills, even if you’re a computer animator! I know times will change, new stuff will come and projects will get harder, so, it’s good that I grew more in my Craftsmanship skill. I may not be the best, but I think I will succeed in my future goals for growing in Craftsmanship.