Polygons in the Rough

Okay so I haven't gotten that far in making my Moldy Vote pin, so let's talk about the digital methods class I'm taking for a moment instead.

Bam, a sort of southwesty looking hut.

Bam, the back of the ratty hut with a giant mouse jumping off the roof.

Bam, a swank interior with the chairs.

Here's one separate for your perusal (Bam!).

Bam, the barely passable animation. Notice anything different from the images?

Either my knowledge of Sketchup is embaressingly small or its got a few quirks since you may have noticed that the background color is different in the animation than it is in most of the still images. That is because even though the program is smart enough to apply the changes you make to the 3D model to all your "frames" of animation it can't handle changing the background color too. Here I am against a deadline so the animation remains as I had it.

Here is how far I have gotten on the Moldy Vote pin by the way. I have the back plate roughed out and currently doing a test threading of the front with the check mark. the next steps are to drill two more thread holes, solder the halves together, solder the pin back on, and then add the patriotic ribbon among whatever other steps I forgot.

For other random news I found out by never having switched my homepage off of MSN, apparently Russia just revealed they have a huge stash of industrial diamonds. Supposedly it's enough high quality industrial diamonds to supply the world for 3,000 years. I'm a wee bit skeptical about the claims, but if havoc is wreaked on the price of the shiny pieces of carbon soon we'll know why.

 

Today's sound interlude is brought to us by the Olsen Gang's 1976 movie The Olsen Gang Sees Red, particulary the most famous scene in which the comedic criminal gang breaks into a theater in time to the opera music playing. Do enjoy, and brush up on your Danish too!

Schrodinger's Semester

I am simutaneously busy and not busy. I run around getting stuff together as the new president of the metalsmithing club on campus, yet have barely been working in the studio. More worryingly despite everything I have to do I don't concsiously feel stressed. Perhaps I've finally stumbled upon this "maturity" thing people talk about.

 

For actual jewelry class I have these sketches for the iVote project which is to make a pin about an issue and persuade the viewer of one side of the issue. I missed the persuasion part and came up with the "Moldy Vote" pin commenting on how half of all registered voters don't vote and those that do tend to be in their early forties. Some states even have made getting an absentee ballot even easier to try to encourage more voters (it's not working by the way). Design wise I like the middle left one and was going to incorporate a rattle in it, using it to symbolise a death rattle.

 

 

In lighter news I have been researching up on the newspaper comic strip Krazy Kat for my digital presentations methods class. In that class we are starting out by designing and making a chair in Google Sketchup which is quite a fustrating program if you have knowledge of any other CAD program. There's a couple nifty tools but there's a lot more I'm missing from Rhino.

 

Anyways by reading this and this book on Krazy Kat I finally understand why the strip is so well regarded, as fine art even, plus I found some strips I enjoy/like the art in:

 

 

All this Southwestern U.S. art research is because I've designed a geometric southwesty looking chair like the background mesas in Krazy Kat and needed the justification. I don't have a spendiferous screenshot of the chair I have mostly made in Google Sketchup but it is based on this chair by Garry Knox Bennett:

 

 

 

Finally to continue my posting of noises, sounds and music I like (or in this case have fond memories of) have this:

 

Also a remix by some one else:

 

 

Ahh young enough to have trouble remembering the world before the internet, yet old enough to remember the horrible noise made by the 56k modem as it dialed, and being unable to use both the phone and the internet at the same time. Strange how "nice" the sound has become through nostalgia even though we all hated it at the time.

 







Themological Argument

I'm excited are you exicted? You should be excited, why aren't you excited? If you can't tell, its time to unveil another theme for the semester! This time it's Noisemakers. And I don't mean these:

I mean it more in the literal sense of objects making noise. This probably means that most of this semester's stuff will focus on rattling things, but perhaps a flute might be made or something. The theme did largely come about because of the inherent playfulness in making an item make a sound, and because the Click Clack earrings I made to sell are so named for the noise they make swinging around.

I'll admit I haven't thought about the theme much beyond rain sticks and jingle bells and poking around on Wikipedia has just turned up wierd instruments like the Vibraslap. I blame the alternative materials project and the six trips to the craft stores it caused as a distraction. When we last left it I had finished this:

and obtained Legos to make jewelry of instead. Also, please enjoy the above  poorly cropped photo of the foam flower in action.

And here's that finished piece. I can't decide on a title for it; I go between something like "Up and At 'em" or "Into the Blue" (obscure movie reference ahoy!) since there's a fighter jet at the bottom.

Look! You can even tilt the plane up slightly... Okay I'm still annoyed that I had to pay for a brand new Batman Lego set just to get the traffic light colored pieces for the earrings and the compliment I got on them was when I was buying my third shot at beads from A.C. Moore.

It's the set in question! can you guess how much it cost because of licensing?

I tried salvaging some of them into this poorly thought out necklace with the car. Now that I think about it I wish I had access to a drill this weekend so I could have drilled some of the houses and hotels from Monopoly in order to make it seem like the car is on a street around your neck, but alas. A project for another day...

Since concluding these things is a bit of a bear, for the semester I'll just post some songs and sounds I like, starting with my current favorite song from OCRemix.org.

Here is the page where you can download it for free. I have always liked upbeat video game music and this is no exception.It's also the chief reason I bought F-Zero for my SNES. Expect many songs from here and a few video game and other sound effects. Not much that it has to do with making noise, but it is a noise I like. And everyone knows listening to music while working in the studio is perhaps the most essential element! In the meantime We can sit back and reflect on how programmers got catchy tunes out of five or so available channels on the circuit board.