Hi! I’m journalist Caroline Delbert and this is The Toolkit from Robotics & Beyond 501(c)3. Our goal every week is to give you some videos, projects, and products that help kids (and parents) get inspired by science, technology, engineering, math, and creative design.
This week in issue 4 (we’re already a month old!) we’re going to talk about repeating patterns. For all our activities, we’ll start with simple squares and then change the shapes in order to make dynamic shapes that seamlessly repeat. In one activity, we’ll use an index card to cut and tape a stencil for an M.C. Escher-style tessellation. In another, we’ll cleverly cut and rearrange pieces of a drawing in order to make a full pattern (think wallpaper or print fabric) that repeats. And finally, we’ll do pixel art that mimics the way game designers make tiles for backgrounds and game objects.
Shortlist
Ages 5-8: Make M.C. Escher tessellations
Ages 8-12: Turn a drawing into a repeating pattern (like wallpaper!)
Ages 12-15: Design pixel-art grass tiles
How Do We Make Things that Fit Together?
Look around in your room or your home for repeating patterns: furniture fabric, wallpaper, favorite clothes, even school supplies. People have always loved to wear or decorate with prints. Check out this 200-year-old fabric with a print of hot air balloons, which were brand new at the time—it’s like if you had a shirt or throw pillow decorated with electric vehicles or iPhones today.
Many prints are made by taking a square and turning it into a puzzle piece, like a jigsaw puzzle, but one where all the pieces are exactly the same shape, so they fit together perfectly in any order. One example is the artist M.C. Escher, who made hundreds of these repeating designs. Other times, designers make repeating patterns that we don’t detect — instead, their careful work means we see a field of flowers on someone’s wall or a seamless print of cool raccoon faces.
One of the hardest things I’ve had to do at work was to make a flat grid shape for an extreme word search puzzle that would “fold” into a 3D shape in Photoshop. You can see the results on this book cover! Like a pattern designer, I figured out how to “hide” the edges where my puzzle folded together. And like the people in two of our projects today, I did it using paper, scissors, and tape.
We’d love to see your results and include them in our next newsletter. Send any photos or feedback to toolkitnewsletter@gmail.com. Are there any specific challenges that your kids have enjoyed?
Ages 5-8: Make Escher Prints with Index Cards and Markers
I absolutely love this project, shared by Tiffany Blushiy, who uploads her school art classes’ favorite projects to Art Lady Channel. By starting with an index card that you square off and trim with scissors, you proceed to subtract wiggly shapes from one side and add them back to the other side. This is how you ensure the “tiles” you make will always fit together.
The final result is a complete tessellation. Watch the whole video, and then try it yourself. I also want to try it myself—maybe I’ll do that and share my results. (My former art teacher, Kelly Eddington, is probably the single teacher who has meant the most to me in my life, and this cool project reminds me so much of her class.)
Ages 8-12: Turn a Drawing Into a Tiled Pattern
This quick Skillshare project from illustrator Julia Rothman shows us how to draw a picture and then turn it into a seamless repeating pattern. It’s a simple but really effective trick, and you can do it yourself with anything you like to draw.
In the example, Julia starts with a drawing of items like shoes and scissors. She carefully cuts the design into four quarters then rearranges them, which ensures all the edges will match up when you put more than one copy together. Then she draws new things in the empty space where the four new pieces are connected.
Ages 12-15: Create a Repeating Background with Pixel Art
This tutorial from an indie studio called XMPT Games walks you through making a background tile with a repeating pattern of bricks. The narrator shows you how to make sure the bricks repeat correctly and even points out some common mistakes people make when they design pixel backgrounds.
A lot of my favorite video games use pixel art, which used to be required because hardware was so much less powerful. Now, people like how it looks and choose to use it on purpose. In the video, he uses Photoshop, but there are many pixel art programs that cost way less and are designed just for making pixel art.
Apps: I like and use Pyxel Edit! Another option is the free, online Pixil Art.
Here’s a piece of pixel art I made myself with repeating tiles:
(Last week’s most popular activity was: the White Stripes stop-motion LEGO music video.)
If you make any cool tile or pixel projects this week, please share! Tag us on Twitter @toolkitstem, share on our Facebook page, or tag @roboticsbeyond on Instagram with the results!
Get in touch: Tell us what you like or don’t like about this newsletter, or send us what your family is looking for in STEM activities and we’ll curate a list for you. Email toolkitnewsletter@gmail.com.
Wow that’s cool!
Mythbusters host and special effects expert Adam Savage made a video documenting all the Lego bricks he finds in his huge workshop, which he takes apart and sorts and puts into a new storage system. It’s long but it’s so satisfying, and he finds some great decades-old stuff. (Fun fact: Someone I know lived in Adam Savage’s grandma’s house while he went to culinary school, and he said the house was still full of robots and sculptures and stuff Adam made as a kid.)
