Artwork for Energy Forms and Changes

[arouinfar]

In https://github.com/phetsims/energy-forms-and-changes/issues/40, we discussed adding a mechanical energy output for Energy Forms and Changes.

@clmccutchan and I met to discuss the needed artwork.

• Fan/propeller with 3 blades
• Prospective should allow for the blade rotation to be clearly visible, but should be closer to a profile view than the rough mockup above.
• 8 frames rotating through 120*
• Blades can be a bit more streamlined, like an airplane propeller.

@clmccutchan please let me know if you have any questions! If you have any trouble running the Java sims, this should help.

[jbphet]

We're getting close to needing this artwork, so I'm increasing the priority of this issue.

[clmccutchan]

Hey @arouinfar, sorry for the long delay on this one! It's taken me awhile to get the perspective right on the blades. Here's one frame for the animation. What do you think of the angle of the blade? I think it needs to be flipped to face the right, but that's an easy edit.

[arouinfar]

Thanks @clmccutchan! I think the turbine itself looks really nice, but the slightly-skewed perspective ends up looking a bit odd in context, so I think we'll need to try going in another direction for this particular sim. That said, I think the turbine artwork will come in useful for a wind energy sim we're currently designing. @clmccutchan can you upload the .ai file in CS6 format to your Drive folder?

Rather than having a slightly-skewed perspective, we'd like to try for a full profile view. If we style the blades like a ship propeller, the rotation should still be pretty clear. @clmccutchan can you mock up something like (b) in the image below? As always, I'd be happy to chat over Zoom if that'd be helpful for you.

[arouinfar]

That said, I think the turbine artwork will come in useful for a wind energy sim we're currently designing. @clmccutchan can you upload the .ai file in CS6 format to your Drive folder?

Just to clarify, I'm only asking for the single frame shown in https://github.com/phetsims/tasks/issues/938#issuecomment-405233479. The wind energy sim is still very much in the design process, so we won't need the additional frames anytime soon. For now, please focus on the ship propeller-style artwork.

[clmccutchan]

@arouinfar I've uploaded the .ai file to my Google drive and titled it Wind Energy. The side view of the fan should be pretty easy to work with, and I'll get started on that.

[arouinfar]

Thanks @clmccutchan! Please let me know if you have any questions.

[arouinfar]

How are things coming along @clmccutchan?

[clmccutchan]

I am so sorry this one is taking sooooo long, @arouinfar! The perspective on the blades has been vexing me, but I should have a set of the images this morning. I think we may need more frames than I've created because the blades facing the viewer change so much as they move.

[clmccutchan]

@arouinfar Here are 6 frames for the fan animation. Just let me know how many more we need since I feel like this won't be enough. Also, let me know if anything looks wonky. I don't really have a good model to work from.

[arouinfar]

Thanks @clmccutchan! These are looking pretty awesome! I'll try these images out in the mockups, and let you know if I have any further feedback.

[arouinfar]

@ariel-phet had some feedback, so reassigning to him.

[clmccutchan]

Looking forward to the feedback, @ariel-phet!

[ariel-phet]

Hi @clmccutchan my main feedback is that in the sim we want the fan "blowing" to the right. So the pitch of the blades needs to be adjusted such that they are taking a bite of the air on the left hand side.

Here is my quick attempt at what I mean. Otherwise, I think this is looking quite good (@arouinfar made a simple animation, and it was looking quite nice as a start)

I think we could also make the fan blades a bit longer, user your judgement but I think up to 25% longer

[clmccutchan]

@ariel-phet When I started drawing, I knew the direction the blades were facing was important but wasn't sure which way the fan needed to turn. This edit is quite simple. I just need to flip the blades in Illustrator. I can also increase the length.

@arouinfar Do you think that you need more frames? I wasn't sure how smooth this would be with only 6 frames.

[arouinfar]

@clmccutchan the direction of rotation isn't important, so long as it goes in the natural direction of the propeller to move air out to the right.

Here's the .gif I made from the images in https://github.com/phetsims/tasks/issues/938#issuecomment-409993793. It looks reasonably smooth to me. If we wanted more frames, we would need to keep the angle of rotation between each frame equal, which leaves us with two options:

1. Add 2-3 extra frames, but then shift the the positions of all the existing frames (effectively redrawing what's already been done).
2. Doubling the number of frames by adding a middle position between each of the existing frames

Both sound pretty labor intensive, so I'd rather defer until we see how it looks and behaves in the sim.

@clmccutchan here are the next steps:

• Flip the blade orientation, as in @ariel-phet's https://github.com/phetsims/tasks/issues/938#issuecomment-410310175
• Increase blade length 20%
• Draw a front-view of the propeller to be used as the selection icon at the bottom of the screen (see the sim mockup in https://github.com/phetsims/tasks/issues/938#issue-327874708).

[arouinfar]

@clmccutchan sent me updated assets for the fan, and things are looking good!

Here's what it looks like in the mockup:

[arouinfar]

@clmccutchan all that remains is a front view of the fan for the selection icon:

[clmccutchan]

@arouinfar Here's the one frame of the side view and the front view of the fan. The front view is currently as large as the side view. I wasn't sure how many pixels it needed to be.

[arouinfar]

Looks great @clmccutchan! Can you upload the .ai file for the front-view to your Drive folder?

[clmccutchan]

@amanda-phet Thanks! I've uploaded the .ai file onto my drive.

[arouinfar]

Excellent, thanks! Everything looks good, so I'll go ahead and close this issue.