Everything so Far + Something New

On this blog, there were five main projects and one collaboration. It has been a crazy couple of months, and it is sometimes nice to look back on what has been done in that amount of time. Learning the Grasshopper program was a bit of a challenge, but it was totally worth it in the end. I can do more for modelling, and complete some functions more efficiently in Grasshopper compared to Rhino.

To start this off, there was the riff of making arches as a test of Grasshopper as a new program. I am feeling a little better about working in Grasshopper, but I do still find it kind of confusing. It will get better with time for sure. I still think it is quite interesting, and was a good start/challenge for learning a new program. I wonder how the image would look if it was filled with arched flowers like the one shown above. It might end up hurting the eyes and be confusing to look at, but it is worth investigating.

Second up is the snowflakes project. It was okay, but it could have been pushed further a lot more in terms of the elements that made them up or to come up with a different design entirely. I found this particular project hard to find a creative venture to engage in. Sometimes that happens in projects, but it is worth exploring. I think I stated in an earlier post that I wanted to combine the etched canvas with socks, but another problem arouse in which the canvas was starting to rip like the socks. I guess the canvas would need to be reinforced with a glue or resin after being etched.

Next is the Parametric vessel. It went through multiple stages:

1) Made in Grasshopper before being baked to Rhino

2) Altered for printing and making components for casting

3) Converted into g-code and printed multiple times

4) Had a plaster mold taken off of it

5) Had a slip cast made in the plaster mold

6) Multiple casts made and altered

 

After the Parametric vessel comes the Salt and Pepper shakers. This project was pretty fun because I really needed a refresher on the 3D Ceramic printer. It also gave me the tools to make the extruding path that I can then Pipe over to get an idea of what the actual object may look like. Though some sizing may be needed. I will definitely be checking the look of anything that I want to print, with a ceramic printer, in the future. I would also like to size the salt and pepper shaker to be bigger and to have both of them to see how the interlocking component looks when it's fully fired and glazed. 

I also want to talk about the collaborative project. It was disappointing when it did not go through fully, but the final look was really great. It started with an idea, a very basic mock up before evolving into a wonderful render and study on how to do the tool path. Again, thank you to Carmen, Nicole, Brielle, and Keven. 

And finally, the new stuff. It was fun reflecting, but sometimes it is good to get to the new stuff. For this particular project, I wanted to keep in line with my work. I am interested in anatomy, so I thought that it would be fun to try and tile a wire like tile onto the surface of the heart. Of course it all has to be a surface, not a polysurface, so I had to Explode it and make multiples of the definition to get the 'wire' on everything. It was then time to animate it. I am not super confident in my Grasshopper abilities, so I thought to keep it simple with a simple Rotate. It was pretty interesting, but not enough, so I decided to try and rotate it on the z axis as well as the x and y axis. I like the end product, and am tempted to do more. 

I did use some of the techniques learned from the previous projects to make a mock up of what some pieces would look in a gallery. This is for a completely separate project, but it does show that I have learned to apply techniques for other means.  

Another use of the processes used is a multi-part mold made from a 3D printed form. In this case, a bowl and mug were printed and had a mold taken to slip cast.