Today was fairly productive. I made what felt like great strides in yesterday's model, but ultimately I couldn't start printing before the day's end. After rebuilding the previous Grasshopper file and cleaning up the curves in general, Nathan helped me in re-panelizing the surface without the aid of Lunchbox (a plugin with the plugin, which allowed me to triangulate the surface so quickly). The reason for this was to gain more control over the shape, and make it easier to change from a 2D surface to the actual shape of folded origami.

Nathan and I were successful in this, at which point our group decided on several aspects which I wasn't sure how to adapt to our needs. I had been concerned it didn't look enough like Kate's changeable origami, so we changed the volume of the extrusions slightly and tried to change the length from 20mm to 30mm. (This has been, as of yet, unsuccessful.) I also wanted to implement curved "ridges" extending from the sides of my surface into the tongue area, to make a more cohesive transition from plastic to fabric. But due to the model's asymmetry (the sole is not symmetrical, so none of it can be), this was impossible to do in a way that looked cool. So we scrapped that, for now. The final group decision was the thickness. The extruded shapes kept intersecting with each other when thickness was added, but Nathan said he would fix that tonight, so we chose to make that dimension 5mm. 

We started off today with a change of responsibilities and priorities. Both Rosie and Saeed came to us with a slightly different design than the one we were working on. Kate is going to model an inner sole, not visible to onlookers, that will be connected to the hinge and folding origami. There will also be holes in that sole, to utilize rushing air from the other, hinged, sole. Hayley and I are working on the melding of fabric and 3D printed origami for the rest of the shoe. Her focus is on the tongue and surrounding fabric. My day was occupied by making the shoe shape/design. I worked on creating curves that formed a sort of gradient, to allow the stationary origami to fade into the fabric in a natural way. As soon as possible tomorrow morning, I'm going to clean up my curves, and experiment with the panelization of origami (including extrusions), and hopefully start printing.

UPDATE: Rhino crashed when I was showing my dad the wonders of Grasshopper, and although my curves were saved, my Grasshopper file was not. The lesson here is that the Autosave folder is useless, and you should always screenshot and save your files copiously.

Initially, Hayley and I spent the morning attempting to think of (as well as design) different mechanisms that could do essentially the same thing as the unfolding origami. This was surprisingly difficult and not entirely fruitful. We tried to take inspiration from creatures that unfold in nature, like peacocks, armadillos, beetles, cell surfaces, jellyfish, etc. I was fascinated by the concept of the caterpillar metamorphosis into a butterfly, and thought it might be cool to capture that in a short moment, and expressed with one step of the shoe. I also made sketches for a surface constructed in a similar manner to a Jacob's ladder, with ridged interlocking sides that would constantly ripple. Thirdly, I made some quick sketches for a shoe made out of varying sizes of actual, terrifying mouths, which would take the breathe-able idea to an entirely different level. Lastly, I made another rapid drawing of a potential material design, focusing on the contrast between abstract shapes—specifically nebulous circles and dramatic triangles.

Of the four, the mouth was the one I focused most heavily on (with regards to mechanics), but that sketch mysteriously disappeared. 

Right before lunch, Kate came to us with a new design for a hinged sole connected to the brim of the shoe, which would allow us to fully harness the power from the heel. I then modeled the sole of one of our New Balance shoes, which was the extent of my involvement with the prototyping. Hayley and I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to find a way to fold Kate's origami pattern with something besides paper. We tried thin wood, HDPE, and cardstock (all twice, all with no success). Either the material would cut too deep or not enough, or in the case of the wood the material just wasn't thick enough.  The cardstock failed so spectacularly that it wasn't even possible to take a picture.

For sketching further, I will likely try to recreate the mouth sketch and try to figure out the mechanics of the others, in addition to trying to model an origami curve that will actually print properly.