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ought to look into buying an Adobe Suite, especially when coupled with the fact my copy of Photoshop is three versions out of date.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:
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:
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.
It's part two of the Rhino CAD workshop today! First off my ring came out of the printer with the some of the objects from other participants, and I discovered that not only did I not check as to whether Rhino was drawing a radius or diameter of my ring band but I was looking at the completely wrong size measurement too. Mine is in the zoom on the right.
So I rebuilt it again because the band is already too thin to scale it down, here's the new one:
I cut down the number of doughnuts, or tori as fashionable people refer to them, because seven was way too much going across the top of the ring. But I'm hoping that I can make a rubber mold of the old ring and cast its as a pair of earrings, like so:
Not a bad styling is it? The next thing was making an array of curved objects to go around a brooch or pendant of sorts and here it be:
Go Pacman! There's nine Pacman shapes (chowing down on power pills) going around a ring. This is also one I want to cast in silver and then paint Pacman yellow and the power pills pink.
The final project in the workshop was doing a test coaster for a color 3D printing process and thus I borrowed this GIS image for "colorful,"
and put it on a coaster in Z-edit like so after building it in Rhino.
It took a few tries but I was able to get the computer to show it without overloading the graphics card and turning into an interlaced mess. In conclusion it was a great workshop and inspiring lecture that made me and everyone else wish for regular access to a 3D printer!
