DSDN 104: Planning The Final Creation

So, to plan the final creation, I took my final model, and downsized it to a reasonable size, and then used the slices tool to overlay 60 slices through the entire length of the model. The problem that I encountered was that the data came out misrepresented, and in odd shapes and sizes. This, as you can see in the contact sheet below, resulted in a lot of trickiness.

The data that I needed however was embedded into the files that I carried across, and it wasn't too tricky to extract the data that I needed out of the files. Once I had the data, I could start forming it into the design that I wanted to achieve.

This is the design that I have decided on for this project. I want to create a model that captures some of the elements that came up when I gave my presentation for the final render for the last project. Some of the elements that I chose to speak about where how the model felt frozen in time. It felt fluid, but it was also static and the materials didn't necessarily speak of an inherent fluidity.

Rather than attempting to capture the fluidity I was trying to go for, I've decided to capture these words that came up when describing the model. I want the model to feel frozen in the materials. I want to catch the model in an instant of its motion, a small fraction of a second of its fluidity.

So I've decided to do that.
The model will be constructed out of equal numbers of pieces of card and acrylic. This will result in a 2:1 ratio of material, since the acrylic is twice as thick as the card.

The model will flow through the acrylic in the negative space, and then emerge in the card into the positive space. The rational behind this is that the acrylic allows for vision through it, while the card is an opaque material. This also increases the amount of juxtaposition that I want to achieve in my design.

I've been told that apparently the card gets burnt by the laser during the course of its path, so painting the card will definitely serve to my advantage. I want to achieve a really expensive, valuable look, as well as a decent weight. Utilising the maximum amount of material will be key, as well as using a decently heavy connection method.

Since we aren't allowed to use any adhesives, the best way to do this would be through some form of string or thread, a metal rod, or a bolt of some sort. I drew in a bolt, because in my mind that adds a lot of structural support, as well as a decent amount of weight.

For the card half of the model, I want to achieve a maximum vision of the form itself, so that's why the set of card shapes are not full triangles. I want to use a 45 degree angle, and then have the small slope of the black shapes be at 90 degrees to the long slope. This would also maintain a degree of consistency to the acrylic angles, which would also be at 45 degrees. This parallel is aesthetically pleasing, and allows for an overall alignment.

This is one of the forms that I plan to use, which I just drew up in Illustrator. To create the actual shapes I was going to utilise for the slices, I took the data from the slices. However, the issue that arose was that the data was all composed of a series of vector lines, since my original model was composed of a huge amount of polygons with no real volume at all. So, to combat this problem, I selected all of the lines and made their stroke weight 3pts and gave the lines round caps. This meant that there were now relatively large and workable shapes.

However, all of the shapes were still only heavily stroked lines, so therefore I rasterised them, then read them back in using the live trace tool, and then expanded the shapes so that I now had a vector line for the outer rim of each shape. This massively reduced the size of the files and also made them significantly easier to work with.

Then I placed the shapes at their right locations into the triangles I had made. For the shapes to all fit on the 1 A4 sheet of each material that we were given, I however needed to reduce the amount of pieces I had, or drastically reduce the size on my triangles.

Having done some reasearch, the smallest commercially available bolt that would actually be feasible for what I needed it for would be an M6 bolt. M6 bolts are 6mm in diameter, so reducing the size of the overall shapes simply wasn't an option. I decided to reduce the number of shapes down from 60 to 50. This meant that the overall length of my model was now going to be 75mm, which is a little small. However, I decided it would make up for its diminutive size with weight and clean design.