big first day

The final project for the semester was to design and fabricate product packaging in groups. I was fortunate to be paired with some very talented students, Cathleen and Sofiya. They were both super capable and talented in the Design phase of the project. I've had many struggles with rhino this semester, so I was grateful to have a bit of a break on that front. We had a little brainstorming sesh and concept generation in class. At first I suggested creating the paper model based on the castle project.  That proved to be a little too complicated, so I then suggested thinking about another well liked Minecraft character. the Ender Dragon was the first, and most enthusiastic response. My super smart group mates took off with the design aspect of the project, choosing to work from home. After in class check ins and discussions were had, we all met up in the Thing Tank to assemble the paper model. Fabrication of this design was difficult, to say the least. Small tabs to connect the shapes...

 I have been endlessly surprised by how individual courses in this first semester have been linked. Common themes and ideas have arisen repeatedly, offering intriguing new means of inspiration. One such example would be between Ceramics and Object Design.  I was having a little trouble with a creative and technical block during a recent assignment. Hand building functional and sculptural pitchers. I was pleased with how the first one came together, not really having a plan at the outset. However, I really felt my second pitcher was lacking in several ways. While enjoyable to make, it turned out to be pretty boring to look at. At this point I might have just started over but, not wanting to waste time and materials, I began to experiment. Taking a suggestion from a friend and painting instructor, I flipped it upside down. The shape instantly reminded me of the Hollow Form objects. At the same time, I had been, and still am, super intrigued by the 3D printed ceramics on display ...

Caught a damn cold and lost reading week.  Work in Progress 

 next project: coat hook. taking a bit of inspiration from Bryan's in-class joke about the drunk octopus meme. here's a *few* photos of my drawings paired with an interweb photo reference of a real octopus. hope to somehow combine the two using Rhino 👾

continuing to work on this file. mesh to NERBS, NERBS to mesh...  UPDATE: fixed, holy shit. found that the problem stemmed from inadequately filling up a hole in the surface with a "surface planar" command giving this "patch" zero thickness. thus Pruca Slicer read this as an error and left 3-4 entire printing levels, or slices, blank. a proper repair to the model was demonstrated using a solid placed inside the area to fill, working as a patch with printable dimensions. lesson learned 💀👍  

  i'm not able to make this guy work. very unfortunate. included some mesh images here. reduced mesh down to 500 polygons for a great effect. unable to print