The Imagine Brush
Kids sit in front in front of a color wheel in a classroom.
A man sits in Hoosier Hills Career Center.
IU design students sit in a classroom.
Each source says: The imagine brush. The imagine brush. The imagine brush. The imagine brush. Imagine brush. Imagine brush. Imagine brush. Imagine brush.
A hand paints: The idea in yellow paint.
Exterior of a school.
Emcee speaks on stage.
Emcee: This is our fifth annual Maker Challenge Showcase. This year we partnered with Indiana University and the Hoosier Hills Career Center for the My Machine Challenge. So their challenge this year was to make a dream machine that they would love to see exist.
Machines are shown.
Emcee: We’re going to take those ideas and the cooperation winners are going to have university students help kind of make a, re-imagine those and kind of help develop and design them a little bit further. And then we’re going to take it even a step further than that.
Design students appear in a classroom.
Emcee: And our Hoosier Hills students over at the career center, they’re going to build some of these.
Emcee speaks on stage in lecture hall.
Emcee: And now for the corporation wide award, the best story behind the design is awarded to the imagine brush from Arlington Heights Elementary. Congratulations.
Kids walk onstage.
Exterior of a school.
Interviewer: How did you introduce yourself?
Kids appear in a classroom.
Jackson: Hi, my name is Jackson.
Jada: My name is Jada.
Paisely: My name is Paisley.
Xavier: My name is Xavier and I go to Arlington Heights Elementary School.
Interviewer: How did you come up with the idea for the imagine brush?
Jada: I started painting and drawing in the primary colors.
Jackson: And so Jada is like the, like, the person who thought of it. I thought of like getting all these things on top of it. So we went to Mrs. Patrick, which is our art teacher, and she gave us these paint brushes to get us on the top of it.
Jada: This, these parts was from our teacher. These parts are from Paisley I think. And then the paint brushes were from Jackson and then these little push things are from me and then the this thing is from Paisley. And I think this thing right here is from Xavier.
Interviewer: What do you want to create with the imagine brush once it’s working?
Jackson: I kind of want to create like a picture like out of this because it’d be the first picture ever made out of a thing that our like our class made. I think it would be really cool.
Interviewer: What would you want the picture to be?
Jackson: Probably the Indianapolis Colts.
Xavier: I want to create butterflies with the imagine brush.
Jada: Maybe flowers.
Paisely: I would probably like to paint a wall.
Interviewer: What color would you want to paint it?
Paisely: Probably blue.
A hand paints the words: The prototype in blue paint.
Two presenters appear in a classroom in Arlington.
Cody: Hi guys. I’m Cody.
Tim: I’m Tim. And as you know, we’re creating your imagine brush.
Cody, Eskenazi School of Design, speaks to the camera. He holds the prototype.
Cody: This is what we came up with for design. The only thing that is not featured in this design is a top plate that fits up here and connects all of these together so they don’t wobble around. Overall, what it does is, you put, you place a cup down here. And then based on the chart that features all the colors, you will then press down on the syringes however much paint you need, and the paint will then come from these knobs into the cup. So if you want to make orange or red, you do three milliliters of yellow and then four milliliters of red to get a nice red-orange.
Tim and Cody present a PowerPoint in the classroom.
Cody: Our idea with this was to make it more of a kit that you can carry along with your backpack and everything. And then down here is a cup for paint. And then there’s three separate vials of paint. They’re the three primary colors. You press on the syringes on the top and paint comes out on the bottom.
Tim, Eskenazi School of Design, speaks to the camera.
Tim: So initially with the imagine brush, we started out trying to make a paintbrush that could mix and distribute paints with three primary colors. But then we found out that it was very difficult to get all the mixing, cleaning, and distribution of paint in such a small body of just a paintbrush. So we then switched to making a paint kit. It’d be able to mix and distribute paint. And then you could just use a paint brush and paint with that.
Cody speaks in the classroom while presenting to the class of kids.
Cody: And there’s a little chart that tells you exactly how much paint to mix for whatever color you want, If you red, or you want purple, you add a little bit of red, a little bit of blue together, approximately two milliliters of each, and then mix together, you get purple.
Cody speaks to the interviewer in front of a color wheel.
Cody: I was actually quite surprised at the fourth graders’ direction. They focused more on the aesthetic parts of the design versus how it worked and how big it was. My main concern was that they’re going to be sad that it wasn’t exactly a paintbrush. But they were actually very receptive to our design. And I was really happy with that. What I will create with the working imagine brush would be, I like painting with like cool colors with splashes of vibrant color. So I’ll go with a blue dominant palette with grays and blacks as well. And with splashes of red flowers and such for a nice landscape picture, I think.
Tim speaks to the camera.
Tim: I’d probably use it just to paint furniture or something. I’m not really that much of a painter, but I could see myself using it if I wanted to paint like a chair a color.
Hand paints: the final product in red paint.
Exterior of Hoosier Hills Career Center.
Male student appears in a workshop.
Wyatt: Hoosier Hills is a place where we can come for half the day, your junior and senior year. And you can learn about different career opportunities like welding, auto body, auto maintenance, different stuff like that.
Students work in the shop.
Wyatt: And you can also earn dual credit at Ivy Tech Community College. So it just gives you an insight into the real world and helps you find some stuff you might want to do later on in life. Last week, Miss McBride came to the welding class and she asked us if we could figure out a way to fabricate something like this made out of PVC pipe instead of this sheet metal.
Wyatt shows the PVC pipe.
Camera pans to leading man in Hoosier Hills Career Center.
Mark Scranton, Hoosier Hills Career Center: The IU students did a fantastic job, did all the blueprints and everything like that.
Scranton gestures to the prototype.
Scranton: And then he did this part which they want to do initially with aluminum. And I said there’s no reason to, because this serves its purpose and it functions as it should.
Wyatt appears in a classroom with the tools.
Wyatt: And so we found some PVC pipe that was the same diameter as this, so it would fit the imagine brush. And so we had to cut i to length and we came up with this. This is before. So we’re actually going to hydro dip this, so it’s a different color and it’s not just this plain white.
Pair of students submerge the tools into the solution.
Wyatt: They have a solution. And then they put this film on top of it. So it’s like a liquid solution. And then you just take the piece of pipe and dip it real slow. And then the film ends up like going onto this in minutes. It looks like that instead of just plain white.
Scranton appears in the workshop and speaks to the camera.
Scranton: The IU guy, again, he did an excellent job in terms of the engineering and the function. Utilitarian value of the idea executed perfect. I couldn’t do a better job. And basically he baked the cake and and all we did was put a little frosting on.
Wyatt speaks to the camera.
Interviewer: What would you create with the imagine brush? I don’t know I think I would see what different colors I could mix to make some pretty cool colors for a landscape.
Scranton appears in the workshop.
Scranton: I would probably donate it to an elementary art program or replicate half a dozen per school corporation for elementary art programs. That would be my suggestion.
A bus drives up to a school. Kids exit. Vice principal Mr. Pillar is seen presenting the projects.
Pillar: Arlington, are you ready to see the imagine paint brush? Looks like now. Here’s where we started. Here is the imagine paint brush.
He unveils the project.
Pillar: So it is gorgeous, thank you. We will take it over to that space and when we’re totally finished, some of the folks from Arlington, if you want to play with it, the adults, anyone from anywhere, you want to check it out, there’s some area over there that you are welcome to paint on our Welcome to Hoosier Hills sign.
People use the tool.
Pillar: If you’d like to draw some designs or write your name in paint or something like that.
Shots of kids dancing, presenting, and chatting roll.
Hand paints: The Imagine Brush.
Hand paints: Tricia Petit.
Hand paints: Paige Falcon.
Hand paints: Brody Lassner.
Hand paints: The end.
Students in MSCH-P435 Advanced Documentary Workshop documented the making of the “Imagine Brush,” a concept created by Arlington Heights Elementary School fourth-graders and brought to life by students in the IU Eskenazi School of Art and the Hoosier Hills Career Center, in partnership with the Wright School of Education.