Ah... Freshman year. My first project. I must admit, it is crazy to go back and write this all these years later. I did this one for a couple of reasons. It was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. I was in a new place, living away from home for the first time, I didn't really know too many people, and meeting new people was difficult because everyone was literally avoiding you like the plague. Clubs couldn't meet and classes hadn't gotten too hard yet. I had overworked myself in high school and I wanted to do something for myself just because I wanted to and not because it would look good on a resume. Well, that's partially a lie, I did say at the time that one day I'd make a portfolio (wow this is getting meta) and it would end up on it, but that's not why I made it. I made it partially because there was nothing else to do, partially because I had never seen Back to the Future and I knew building something from it would convince me to finally watch them, but I think I mostly made it because I had to.

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I left high school and home with all these nascent skills and aspirations. I was so ready to do something with them and to expand on them, that one day I just opened Creo and started modeling. I don't think I ever decided to do it, I just finished my first model, went to bed, worked on it the next day, and kept going from there. All of a sudden, I was just doing it. I brought up the project to someone I met in a virtual club callout who said Back to the Future was her favorite movie, and she became one of my best friends and eventually my research partner (check out JAWS.)

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I started documenting the process as I went along and quickly ran into the problem of not knowing how I was going to make the board itself. The large kicktail complicated things because I didn't have the resources to bend wood and if I wanted to use a CNC router to make the shape, I would need a thick piece of wood that I couldn't afford. So I started talking with students and professors at Purdue online before being referred to the Forestry Department who I learned occasionally sells wood for discounted prices. But then, upon talking with them and telling them about the project, they offered to admit me into a one-credit-hour 8-week independent study course, where they would teach me how to woodwork, generate CAM, and overall make sure I make the board the right way. All that, and if I signed up, they'd give me the wood for free! So naturally, I took the opportunity and got working on the rest.

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The next step was making it look like the hoverboard, and that all came down to the cheesy 80's design on the deck. There were no good images, templates, or anything of the sort available online, especially with the dimensions I needed. So I bit the bullet, bought Adobe Illustrator, opened it up, and sat there for hours as I watched tutorial after tutorial. Eventually, I had done it. I had remade and rescaled the logo from scratch as a pristine, infinitely scalable vector image. Now to turn it into a giant sticker, I asked around and heard that the College of Design, Art, and Performance might have a vinyl plotter. I walked into the building, asked around a little, and then was ushered into a large office with the assurance that whoever's it was would be able to help me. I sat down in the chair and noticed the name tag on the desk in front of me read "Head of the Reuff School of Design, Art, and Performance." I took one look down at my Sesame Street hoodie in horror as he entered the room behind me... He was really nice! The plotter wasn't open for student use during the pandemic, but he made an exception for me and personally paid for the cost of materials! I was blown away!

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The rest went petty simply and smoothly. I scheduled time to laser cut some brackets out of some scrap steel at the maker space on campus and used their break to bend them. I bought some really cheap acrylic from the Purdue surplus store and covered it in mirror paper from Amazon. I finished the 8-week course, spray-painted the board, and carefully applied the giant sticker. Then I screwed everything together, took off some protective plastic and it was done!

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It secured to my electric longboard via a few brackets and once it was on, it controlled about the same if only with a little worse of a turning radius. I got an outfit to match and finally watched the movies in one big sitting. I think what I really got out of it though was the knowledge that if I'm left to my own devices, I'll make something and there will be people willing to support me in doing so.

Fall - 2020