From the start of my college experience, I have noticed a positive shift in the way I act/behave. From my freshman year of college, I have learned to be more confident in myself and try to improve myself to secure a better future. I have done this through consistently going to the gym and reading a variety of science-based books. I have found that from this, I have had a more positive outlook and have been more motivated to work on different projects. So, the goal for this term was to illustrate that change in my capstone.

The first ideas that came to my mind was using Neon lights. Neon lights are very bright, colorful, and are eye-catching to the viewer. I felt that this medium would be the perfect way to showcase my ideas, since that vibrancy would correlate well with the overall image I wanted to present. Unfortunately, I couldn’t use the actual gas, as this would be expensive and not ideal with the 7-week term. Instead, I used a set of Lamomo LED strips that simulated the same effect as vintage Neon lights.

For the design, I choose to try and model it based off of vintage neon signs. From my research, most signs were depictions of simple shapes and symbols, rather than having full images of texts and other complex shapes. This conflicted with my original idea of doing an animation of a person bench-pressing weight, as this was more complex. Below is a showcase of the original idea that I had for the sign.

With this in mind, I decided to formulate the final product to be a mixture of two symbols. The first symbol, made with red LEDs, represents a headset, which showcases my passion to play games. The second symbol, made with blue LEDs, depicts a dumbbell, which showcases my love for exercising. At first, I was thinking of combining the two images to represent one whole lighting scheme, but after testing, I felt that it wouldn’t look as clear to the viewer, due to the two different colors clashing with each other. It would have also looked messy, with both symbols consisting of red and blue LEDs, taking away from the overall quality of the final product. Also, this would be a lot more difficult to wire, as the strips that I got would have to use diodes, in order to not allow of the LED strips to light up all at once. The white LED strip is more of an aesthetic piece, as many signs were surrounded by some long light strip. I choose the warm-white strip because I feel that it makes the sign more inviting to the audience to look at. Images of the final product are shown below, including a video demonstration of the Neon Sign.

Overall, I am very satisfied with the quality of the final product. I learned a lot about the different materials used for this project, such as polycarbonate and the Neon LEDs themselves. I also learned a lot about the different tools associated with the project, such as drilling, soldering, and using the laser cutter (originally, I wanted to do this on acrylic, but I couldn’t get a large sheet to put the project on). I also had a lot of fun with the electrical componentry, mainly due to how I am an electrical engineer and I love constructing different types of circuits. I hope that I can continue to combine my artistic abilities with my electrical knowledge to create more artwork.