Artist, inventor, and longtime author Rodney Frost is known for wacky, whimsical woodworking books that encourage readers to experiment. With his newest, most creative volume yet, he provides an introduction to the wild and whimsical world of kinetic art—art that moves. Using plenty of informative sidebars and dynamic illustrations, Frost teaches the basic techniques in his own inimitable style, beginning with easy, fun projects like weather vanes and mobiles powered by air currents alone. Then it’s on to simple toys you manipulate with strings, and art mechanized by levers, cranks, cams, and cogs. Far from a routine woodworking book, Creative Kinetics will inspire even the least craft-minded reader to pick up some scissors and turn a tuna can into a propeller or cardboard into a jumping-jack.
Book Description
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Rodney Frost has designed bottles and tableware, written for newspapers, made snowshoes, decorated popcorn wagons, built buggies and sleighs, been a seafront candymaker, and raised a family, in addition to writing several books on woodworking. He is a graduate of Brighton College of Art and has appeared on the TV programs "In the Workshop," "Canadian Gardening TV," and "Hands Over Time." He lives in Orillia, Ontario, where he sews clothes for himself, plays his euphonium, and wonders what's coming next.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
45 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A disapointment,
By
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Creative Kinetics: Making Mechanical Marvels in Wood (Paperback)
The cover is misleading. It shows an interesting artwork but the text is trivial in ideas. The approach is to consider a mechanical linkage, cam, crank etc., and then give detailed instructions on making boring and trivial example. The frustrating aspect is that photographs of interesting but complex pieces are scattered through the book. I expect that he author felt that explaining the basic mechanisms was the major point. What is omitted is combining multiple mechanisms and creating something other than a simple toy for a six year old. The result is an unbridged gap between the art that is occasionally illustrated and the bulk of the text. The first 71 pages could have been covered in fewer than seven pages with no loss. The first interesting photographs are on pages 72 and 73. This construct looks as if it utilizes at least half dozen mechanisms. I am sure that there are a number of interesting problems in the design and construction of this item. What would have been interesting would be details of the working parts with some discussion of the choices and problems. The object is not to suggest that the reader would duplicate this artwork but to give the reader some idea of the decisions, issues and problems in a real complex construction. As an example, This construct uses three pulleys at the base. Pulleys are finally discussed on pages 112-115. Is the third pulley a driven pulley, an idler, called a rider by the author, or both? The photograph raises dozens of interesting questions but the answers are not in this book. What you will find is that the great majority of the book is construction details on projects that almost no one would want to build and very little help on real projects.
27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Expected more,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Creative Kinetics: Making Mechanical Marvels in Wood (Paperback)
I have mixed feelings about this book. I wanted to like it because I liked the author's prior book and I expected this to be a continuation. The cover art suggested more complex movements than the book describes. Books by Rodney Peppe and the author's prior work are more useful than this book. The examples tend to be of the rather simple, single movement kind. For example, put a ball on a stick, put a pivot point in the middle of the stick, push the lower end of the stick back and forth and watch the ball move back and forth. The book does cover simple movements well. Another example, you can make a cardboard profile of a face, make the jaw with a pivot point and a long lever, then move the lever up and down to open/close the mouth.
Possibly, the book was intended for a very young audience, or the author wished to get something out without giving away his "secrets." There is anecdotal wisdom here instead of descriptions about combining various mechanical movements, and no descriptions of what the more complex objects actually do. The author talks about a piece with a clockwork motor which runs for a minute or so, but doesn't say what it is doing during that minute. Perhaps nothing? I think I have a different definition of what kinetic art is than the author. I would suggest a visit the Cabaret Mechanical Theater website and accessing some of the links for examples of kinetic/mechanical works, many in wood.
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great for the mechanically un-inclined!,
By Book Readin' Pixie (California, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Creative Kinetics: Making Mechanical Marvels in Wood (Paperback)
When I set myself the task of making a moving-part toy, I decided it needed a crank to run. The only problem is that the last time I studied simple machines was in 4th grade. No problem, right? I wandered down to the library and checked out six kinetic sculpture books (along with spending a few hours online).
The other books were full of ideas, inspiration, and some fascinating discussions of how a piston engine works. But not ONE really explained what a cam was, or how to get my crank to move something up and down instead of circularly. Until I got this book. Thank goodness for Creative Kinetics! For those of us who remember nothing about simple mechanics (or for children who are just learning for the first time), it gives very basic illustrations to help you understand what different mechanisms are (pulleys, gears, cranks, flywheels, levers, etc), how changing the measurements affects the amount of work they do, and how to use a mechanism to create a particular effect. While the sample projects are not at all fancy, I loved how quick they were, and that they could be made with cardboard and string (among other household objects) to get the concepts down before tackling them in wood in my own project. This book clearly isn't designed for the advanced artist - but it's perfect for someone like me who can't remember beans about 4th grade and really needs help figuring out which parts (or angles, or lengths) will do the trick.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
