FMX 213 - 3D Printing and Modeling

Sadly all my process posts I posted earlier, and my laptop doesn't like downloading fusion, so I suppose this will have to do for a final post. Here is my doofy little monument hanging out at final critique! I didn't realize how big everyone else printed theirs until I put mine next to it. I kinda like how small it is.  While passing it around, everyone else seemed to comment on how well the sculpting looked while it was scaled down that small. I'm glad the scale covered some of the larger hiccups I had while trying to scult in mesh mixer. I was especially afraid that some of the smaller limbs and the ears would be super fragile, but they hold very well. I have a feeling that it'll stay in place and be a very strange conversation piece on my desk for a long time. 

      Thankfully, this strange little horse statue was the only thing I've printed all semester that didn't mess itself up at some point during the process. It's very strong, and the smaller details look much better on the actual printed version than in the 3d modeling program. I think that's probably because of the scale and material smoothing over my more obvious rough spots. The hooves printed very nicely, which makes the entire thing look that much funnier to me. I'm glad that I nixed some of my shoddier sculpted aspects to use the pre-modeled horse legs, ears, and human head. It almost looks like it could be an actual statue. Almost.    The purpose of my idea was mostly to take the power away from these controversial figures in history. So many of these monuments were made of confederate soldiers whose prime purpose was to rip the country apart to keep their slaves. As such, it's no wonder that seeing recreations of their image is uncomfortable ...

Wasn't quite sure how I was going to pull this idea off when I first started it. I knew it'd be pretty much impossible to model the idea fully using just autodesk fusion. I figured it'd probably be an easier idea to start with a bunch of basic shapes down first and work from there. I had a saddle on E Lee's back when I first sketched the image, but I wasn't actually sure how to make something like that visible. I'm kind of sad I had to scrap that. It was pretty funny. The first go of the modeling came out a bit strange because the horse has no determinable features, and the man just... didn't get a head.               After moving everything into mesh mixer, I realized that meshmixer wasn't going to do what I wanted it to. That was fine. At this stage in my artist career I'm used to 70% of the steps being some form of bullshitting. The sculpting tools were a bit wonky, so it took a while to get things into the general shape I was kind of g...

Camille Utterback is an artist that works with interactive and digital mediums. Many of her pieces involve movement technology in order for the audience to change what they see. She also uses LED lighting in many of her projects, showcasing how light and color bounce off of certain objects. Her artwork captures people's attention longer than most exhibits would, because of the way human influence effects the overall outcome. Personally, I always found interactive exhibits more interesting than simply a hall of instillation or pictures. It showcases that art can actually be enjoyable for both the creator and their intended audience. Plus, it usually doesn't involve the museum goers having avid knowledge of different artistic movements and styles, and instead just focuses on the pretty colors and technology. I found a lot of her pieces very interesting, but my favorite was tied between Radiant Cache and Light Field. Both of these utilize large glass planes reflecting light that...

The previous concept I had wound up being far too difficult for me to even sketch, let alone try to actually model (and you can see the remains of it in the top left corner there). When I was looking into more traditional confederate monuments and statues, I noticed that most of them wound up being famous soldiers on horseback. This makes sense, seeing as how they were in fact on horseback during those battles and those poses were generally seen as a sign of strength. However, I couldn't help but put together what I consider the obvious next step to that: the horse riding the soldier. Of course, I can't draw horses either, so this should be an interesting project, to say the least. Hoo boy.                I don't actually think simply trying to demolish the statues entirely will do much in the long run. It's still important to remember our countries terrible history without raising these people up as heroes with their own statues (Robert E...

First of all, I'd like to thank you for assigning this project so I had the excuse to make something like this. It brings me an immense amount of joy to see these little crabs chilling on my desk now.   Technically, both the yellow and pink ones didn't print fully, but the pink one is still capable of standing up on its own and looks fine from the front. The red one was split in half and printed perfectly, but is a little too small to actually hold my tablet pen. He holds regular pencils just find though. I couldn't bear to get rid of the yellow one either. He's just doing his best.  Fusion was objectively a lot less difficult to use than I thought it was going to be. I can see the differences between it and Maya a lot better now, although I doubt I'll be doing much 3D printing on my own time outside of college (those machines are expensive). This was a fun project though, and exploring the new fab lab was cool too. 

This is Jarold. He's my best friend and I love him dearly.  Finishing him was relatively easy seeing as how he's identical on both sides. Mirroring stuff is painless in fusion, which I am eternally grateful for. Seems like he's going to print for a really long time (and the time was almost double without lowering the amount of layered material) but it'll be worth it. Hopefully he'll at least be printed by the time the open house happens tomorrow so other people can appreciate him.

    Fusion is a lot weirder to use than Maya, but it seems a bit easier for the purposes of this project. It's at least faster to make organic forms, which my project is entirely made out of. The tools - in concept at least - are quicker to use. Although, the hole tool in particular didn't seem to like me very much. Making just one claw took nearly an entire hour due to the hole never wanting to actually sit at the right angle. I still don't know how I fixed it. I think it might've just been luck or God deciding to give me a break for once. I'm glad for the tool, at least. The claws were the things I were most worried about, and simply punching holes in large ovals was much simpler and looks much nicer than if I had to individually sculpt each half of his hand.

Jim Campbell works with LED instillation and sculpture. Although he says little about himself or his work on his website, he seems to take his inspiration from pixel art and grid systems. Many of his works are simply small lights making a simple pattern on a larger canvas, which I personally find very charming. I personally find pictures much more interesting when they're made out of something weird, yet still get across the same image to the audience. Some of these light pieces apparently show moving video (even though on his website none of these pieces actually move and I couldn't find any actual footage) which makes the pieces even more interesting. Seeing how he worked in film before he moved on to his own art, his sculptures give me a bit of an old music video feel. Something about the effects of the materials mixed with the actual moving pictures reminds me of the silly mtv music videos with a million effects attached to them. It's charming. Some of his other artwo...

For the sake of my terrible computer, I mostly stuck to the most basic shape on the program while testing this out for the first time. It still had a little bit of trouble and nearly crashed twice, but it also created a very avant garde looking golf ball.  I tried the bunny after things were going better, but my computer didn't really like that decision too much... It eventually worked out though. He looks cool, but I feel bad for mangling his poor ears like that. I kept thinking about that 3D printed skull in the lab while doing this. Something about knowing the pattern was made with only 2 buttons makes it both more and less impressive at the same time.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2264332/comments - don't ask what this thing is just know it's a joke my friends and I make all the time and having it in real life would cause all of them to disown me at once. which is my life goal. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2536783

These are a bit sloppy but generally I want to base a tablet pen holder off my nifty little crab friend here. The claws would have to have a circular opening of about .5 inches and have a flat bottom but otherwise he seems relatively easy to make. I saw something similar to this on twitter and I want to own my very own friend. I will cherish him.

I laughed an embarrassingly long amount of time at this monstrosity. His name is Laurence.   

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKbuTo7xH1c Blogger is a bit weird with the formatting of all this stuff, but let's hope it all works correctly. I think maybe the bottle was a bit too easy for a first project, but it was a good start to the medium and one that didn't fully stress me out. I think it came out pretty well. 

                        Rebuilding the model the second time wasn't nearly as difficult as I was imagining it would be. Considering I had the first bottle mostly finished, it was really a matter of matching up the important sections and tweaking some parts that I didn't think looked realistic enough. I fixed the cap in certain areas to make it look less rounded and strange, and the bottom of the bottle didn't give me any issues on the second go, which I appreciate. I'm almost glad I redid it, because I think it look a lot better now. Setting up lights was a bit strange. the spotlights kept hitting in weird directions and getting black spots in strange places. Although the final animation looks decent, the program itself didn't seem to like my lights very much. It worked as much as it needed to though. Maybe next time the shadows will actually want to act like shadows.

Ian Cheng works the classic feel of old video games into an immersive storytelling experience in his project Emissary. While his own description of the project is a touch confusing, the stories the simulations tell seem to be rather similar - an emissary coming to a group of people and their response to the message. He adds a whole host of possibilities and endings, showing the nature of human interaction. While sometimes the people will listen to their emissary's message and follow, other times they'll react with scorn and be destroyed by the underlying threat. This idea of multiple story lines within the same concept makes the idea feel all the more fluid and real, and less like a pre-determined video game. On top of that, the general atmosphere and tone pushes the boundaries on the video game medium, and gives the viewer the idea that they're standing within the art piece itself. I personally enjoy his work due to the low poly resolution he gives all his models. Many m...

I didn't have much to edit over the weekend since the bottle seemed to be nearly complete already. However, I'll have to pretty much redo the whole thing because of the weird tearing issues on the bottom. I am personally a bit nervous that my own computer won't be able to fully handle the program in large quantities, but hopefully that shouldn't be a problem just for this first project. I'm a little miffed that I made this mistake towards the end of the construction instead of at the beginning. Probably would've saved a decent amount of time. Live and learn I guess.

It took me several days to realize I posted this onto the wrong art class blog. I hope that doesn't effect my grade too much. I'm enjoying trying to model the bottle, but I'm almost a bit concerned I picked something too easy. Even with the strange shape, it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot going on. Then again, I don't want to pick something more complex and potentially not get the project done in time. Nevertheless, I do enjoy trying to make the slits in the cap. I'm not sure why it's so satisfying to work on, but it's almost therapeutic.