Christmas CAD

I've been muddling through Rhino 5.0 and Flamingo nXt attempting to make my lovely jewelry objects look pretty and becoming fustrated that the version is just different enough that it feels like I'm relearning everything, and everything I do make doesn't look as good as it should. But, let's begin with what I have worked out, with the example of my arrow rings. The above image is rendered with Rhino's built in renderer as compared to...

How Flamingo does it. I assure you nothing has changed between these two images other than the renderer. Flamingo images will always have more light in them by default.

 

 

The other new(ish) thing with Flamingo nXt is that it will keep making passes over the rendered image, attempting to smooth out the shadows each time until you tell it to stop or set a limit. Here I let the program do three passes. Notice how blurry the shadow are on the yellow ring in front especially set against the single pass image below it.

Another advantage of sorts with nXt is that they dumped in a ton of background options, or at least made them much easier to access. No longer is it necessary to create an infinity cyc by manually putting a curved surface behind your object you can instead set the background to be a two or three color gradient or an image. I tested it out going from black to white in the background of this earring and human shaped display prop I made.

Lights and reflectivity are still a huge problem and perhaps are even worse in this program. No matter what I do the lights are still too bright in Flamingo and over expose the hell out of it. This was perhaps the most aesthetically pleasing mistake because it sort of looks like the old PS3 game Mirror's Edge, which I never have played.

While I work out how to light and render shiny objects I'm building a few more complex ones now that im a little more into the Rhino groove. At this point I swear "sweep rail" must be my favorite command to do.


Well it's back to the virtual drawing board to see what else I can work out by my deadline! Ciao!

End of the Year Clean Up

Probably ought to do a little end of the year wrap up on my semester, so lets break it down by class.

CAD: Nothing changed since the last post, look for more stuff by the end of January.

Jewelry:

A sad looking drum that needs revamping when it comes to the head. But I have a plan for fixing it later....

And the whole shebang for this semester. Rather disappointing isn't it? It was a bit of a bad semester all around for everyone in the class though, blargh. Hopefully the next go around will be better.

Fibers has eight of my 10 samples here for the final project and

a blurry cell phone picture of the final piece. It's about the Albright-Knox and how the classical architecture is at odds with the modern art in it. The columns are trying to contain the art (or the art is trying to break out). Anyway, the columns growing over the background remind me of the Konami shooter Lifeforce in which your piloting a ship through some sort of organic thing with walls that grow and get in your way.

 

 

Since they are so far back in the top image have some exclusive images of my two favorite samples. First is a nice modern art looking one that was the basis for the final (and also looks better) and the second one has a nice japanese garden railing reflecting in the pond look to it. All in all a great year for me in fibers; I'm tentatively looking forward to the next class im taking in it.

 

Digital Methods: the less said about it the better I suppose but heres some stuff anyway,

 

Random ad I had to cobble together into photoshop.

Stupid illustrator tools.

The silly old southwestern chair hut.

Probably the best pieces from the class are these laser cut cloud earrings. I'm happiest with how these came out despite the bad glue job, would laser cut again etc, etc. Which means I ought to look into buying an Adobe Suite, especially when coupled with the fact my copy of Photoshop is three versions out of date.

Overall its been a a fairly good semster in all the classes that aren't directly concerning jewelry, funny how that happened. Since I am in a celebratory mood and it's nearly Christmas let's end with OCRemix again and a Mario/Christmas music medly:

 



CADverision

Waaay back over Thanksgiving I did get into Rhino CAD, finally, and here are the results:

First is an arrow ring I attempted to make in wax with little success and here I'm all happy it has no naked edges and can be 3D printed.

And the Nacell Ring, rather based off the Starship Enterprise. This is another one I attempted to build in real life which didn't work at all, especially since I attempted it in brass to scale (scale being that it's a size 7 ring with 4 mm stones).

A laser cut idea that I never got around to and was suprisingly fiddly to build in CAD, mostly because I couldn't just duplicate one of the trapezoidal shaped parts to the earring and scale it, I had to rebuild large portions that refused to join right for some reason. Eventually I did get it to work right though.

This is the other idea I've got for some laser cut earrings that I never had time to do so why not do it in CAD?

When you're left to your own devices in a 3D program, shit gets wierd. I made these goofy earrings by simply getting bored and messing about in the program and I think they look kinda stupid because of it. Evidently I need to go in with a plan or a sketch or attempt to duplicate a real life object instead of trying to start with Rhino first.

Obviously I never got a chance to render these with the crushing weight of my other studios, so that's the next step, in addition to building a few more interesting jewelry pieces. Not a very vibrant update really on what I've been doing so here's a gaint water balloon popping in slow motion:

That'll do.

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.

 







Brewed to Perfection

This post has been percolating for at least two weeks for your enjoyment; since I keep having to revise it again and again because so many art projects became due all at once. First the fun stuff: somehow I came across this link to a 87 minute documentary on hulu called Chasing Ghosts: Beyond The Arcade. Though not the best documentary, it did explain to me a lot about Twin Galaxies, Walter Day's desire to keep track of arcade high scores, and a good portion of where are they now for the guys who had the top scores.

Through the interviews you get a sense of what the arcade culture was like and their perspective on how and why it died so abruptly (Home gaming surpassing the arcade as well as rougher clientele showing up to  arcades). It's still difficult to imagine what arcades were like having missed that entire period of video gaming history but virtue of having been born in the 90s, but it sounds awesome.

While not "researching" games I have been camping out in the studio working on a few things and completing things at a rate that feels way too slow at times.

CAD class at least is quite fun and I completed the first project a while ago, which is this sweet wind up robot. I thought I was on to something different with my color scheme, but alas looking around the Internet there is at least one retro tin wind up robot with the same green, red, and yellow. At least the design is different, toy makers and sci-fi filmmakers didn't base too many robots on an egg shape (Robbie the Robot comes closest).

Next is ceramics, which is still not a favorite medium of mine. The left is a coil built vessel with red and black slip with sgrafitto in it, post improvements. My snake pot came out of the raku firing well (middle picture) but it didn't clean up as well as I would have liked (right picture) the snake was supposed to be a blue-green, but I guess I didn't slap on enough layers of glaze. At least it looks kinda ancient? Anyway on to Metalsmithing...

Where my angle raised vessel is almost the shape I want it so I can start worrying about building the base and ordering some super special awesome materials for it. I got a good start on the catenoid, though I get the feeling I'm doing it wrong, judging by the interesting blisters I some how gave my self hammering it and the charming surface cracks it developed. It's now a gamble as to how complete this will be by the due date since I have been focusing most of my time on jewelry.

I have the chain together and I just got the clasp soldered together last night. Tonight I have to round up some two part epoxy in order to add my last minute decorative doodads to the clasp. The cheese grater holes inside Pac-man's mouth will have a rats nest of colorful wires glued in; left over from when I dismantled three Genesis controllers to make a little model chair for intro to 3D Design. The big copper loop will get a cut in it so I can string on wooden Parcheesi pieces, spaced out by brass tubing, which will also conveniently cover the break in the wire.

Now provided I don't get distracted by attempting to beat lousy and unusual games in the the Pac-man franchise or by such paltry thing as sleep or dinner I should be able to finally finish this necklace and get on to designing the VR glasses.

Things are a Groovin'

Its been two weeks into the semester, and a lot has been happening, even though I haven't been able to get into the studio as much as I want to (curse you swipe card)! and the quickest way to show off is through pictures so here we go!

Metalsmithing: worked up a couple pipe cleaner models for the nested vessel project. I am leaning toward the one on the left, and hope I can use 16 gauge blue aluminium wire to weave between  the copper spokes of the base. It's going to take a hell of a lot of wire though and I'm not sure I have the patience or the funds. (Also I cannot get this paragraph to justify to the left for some reason, perhaps it needs to express its individuality?)

Jewelry: Making endless jump rings at home since the lock on the studio isn't active. I was able to get in one day though and start cutting out Pac-man links as well as learn how to fuse some jump rings! I'm only halfway regretting using absurdly thick metal for Pac-man, but at least the links will have more dimension to them?

Ceramics: Yep its a pinch pot with a snake looping around it. For this project I had to create a zoomorphic tripod vessel and this was the only good idea I could come up with. On the right is the slapped together maquette for the final. The final itself actually does stand on its own, though I do wish I could go back and re-seat the pinch pot at a more rakish angle but the piece is now dry and ready for crit on Tuesday. 

CAD Class: In a move that I feel is somehow ironic, I'm the farthest ahead on things in my Rhino CAD class. Thus far we've been learning the interface and what tools do what by going through the basic tutorials. Hence the castle for moving and stacking solids, the flashlight for Boolean unions and differences (and an extra bit on lighting) and I got ahead on the duck, which is about manipulating the standard solid shapes into something more organic and a few other details. Now we are going to start an actual "real" project by building a toy. So far my only plan is to build a wind up toy, but it should be fun!

Something like this one though more complex than a sphere. Speaking of toys I've found some fun little quasi-inspirational things on the internet, which will be shared next time when I pretend this blog is on Tumblr.