Sorting out the money

We had decided to discuss the money right at the end of the project and sort out who owes and who is owed money. We did this today. We calculated our total expenses (making the tree, light box, testing paints etc) and figured out that $26 from each person covered these making it fair. Since some of us had bought more materials than others we calculated how much each person needed to pay or be paid from this. 

We paid each other or got paid according to what money we had or hadn't contributed to the project. On top of this we made a $4 profit from tokens (even though we didn't charge any!) and $100 from selling our tree to Tina. That meant we each got paid $20.80 at the end. So we didn't end up making a profit but we thought spending only $5.20 on a uni project each was a success and probably our cheapest yet which was one of our aims right at the beginning! 

Facebook Group

Hey tutors reading our blog atm MESSAGE FOR YOU HERE

Heres a link to our facebook group so you can give it a look through and see us chatting away and making decisions about many things and posting what we have been up to of recent.

Selling our tree

On the day of the market Tina Downes came to us asking if she could purchase our tree! At first we weren’t even sure if she was serious because we were honestly so shocked she liked it that much that she would want to keep it. After having a group meeting and discussing the idea we decided that it would be a great idea to cover costs and give our tree away to someone that wanted it for we didn’t have anywhere to store it and there was only two trees but five of us so splitting it up would be difficult. We worked out the cost of the tree first to make a decision on the selling price ($56.20) then contacted Tina via email explaining the costs stating we had decided to ask for $90 for the two trees and all the pieces with it. She accepted this offer and the very next day I went to take her the tree and all the pieces and she gave us $100 instead. Tina is now the proud owner of our tree wanting to keep it on the end of her kitchen bench for display.

We had thought along the making process about how cool it would be to produce and sell our tree as we all wanted one for ourselves however we never expanded on the idea and thought that it could happen until Tina asked about it. As a group we will talk about potentially marketing the tree in the future however its so timely to make that it might be difficult, it would also be hard to market and sell ourselves so the idea would need to be sold off.

Market Day

 The market day was a success for our group. We had many people coming to our stall curious about what our tree was about. Some people dug straight into the shapes and started building while others stood back and admired the structure. After a little prompting though everyone who came to our stall had a turn at building. It seemed that all ages (from young children to adults)could enjoy playing. We had several people returning to our stall throughout the market day to have another go at building. The popularity of the game resulted in some exciting tree-building innovation, however at times when we felt it was getting so big that there could be a danger of it falling we removed a lot of the parts and put them back down for people to stack up once again. Pulling down the parts also helped show that it was an interactive structure as when it got too big we saw that people tended to touch it less as it seemed a bit daunting and more like a work of art than a game.

  Some people got creative and came up with other ways of joining the pieces than using the slots. We thought this was great and encouraged this!

 Overall it was a great day and we are all pleased with the outcome!

Our Pitch

Before the market we all had to pitch our stall to the market. Our group didn’t so much want to over re-herse ours and make up a spiel about the tree for that wasn’t what our tree was about. Our tree was an installation for leisure activities and we wanted to how the teachers this. We decided that we would ask the teachers to play with the tree and get a feel for it so they could see for themselves what you can do with the tree (and what each other were doing with the tree) while we explained our idea and how we got to it on top of them. We all wanted to pitch in and make it very casual so there was a relaxed feel to our pitch and stall while the played around for 90 seconds.

While the teachers played with our tree and some listened this is what we told them (in general, not word for word obviously):

From the beginning our team Building Branches wanted to play with recycled mdf and card. We also were looking at creating many 3D shapes and forms, at the time that students could turn from 2D to 3D and take home with them. At one point we were asked how we were going to display these pieces which is where we introduced the tree. Eventually the tree developed and we had a lot of fun playing with it and added pieces turning it into a puzzle tree. Or a 3D doodling tree as we call it. This tree can be used however you want but the tree main ways people use it is either 1. Mindlessly placing pieces on the tree just for the fun of joining peices 2. Making stories out of the characters and creatures they find and place on the tree or 3. Trying to stack as many pieces on as possible without it falling over.

Setting up the Stall

Today We started setting up for the market tomorrow. This took longer then expected for we had to co ordinate with group 33 to make sure that we were both considerate of each others space and needs. We had previously made sure our stall astehtics were the same so our stall would look like one big joined stall rather then two sperate stalls in one big space. We decided to cover our stall in cardboard and brown paper from the fashion department to match the card and mdf we both had in our stalls. We also set up our logos and tree up on our new lightbox which looked great. Tomorrow we will bring in the laptop with our movie playing on it for people to watch so they can get an idea with how people interact with the tree so they won’t be intimidated to play with it.

Photo by Laura

Picture by Chris

lightbox construction

Testing the lightboxes frame before I add the mdf facade and plywood top

Frame ready for facade and light