3D

The new semester!

It’s decided! I’ll be concentrating on 3D and storybook illustrations this semester.

The 3D seminar:

This seminar is focusing on the basics of working with 3D applications. This includes planning, modeling, texturing, lighting, animating and rendering the three-dimensional objects. This semester’s main topic is Sci-Fi… I couldn’t resist! So except for all the technical aspects we also read books (Stanislav Lem – “The Futurological Congress“, Asimov’s robot stories and Strugatzky’s “Roadside Picnic“) and analyze movies of the sci-fi genre. For now we haven’t created anything too exciting, but we only had a 4 or 5 meetings. I uploaded 2 picas I did as homework so far (I’m still very new to 3D modeling though so don’t expect too much):

The storybook illustration seminar:

In this seminar we are working on a real to-be-published adolescent’s horror-storybook. Logically we have to stick to the page format and other rules (all illustrations have to be in grayscale for example). At the end of the semester the publisher’s editors will pick the illustrations they see fit in their concept. I’ll be experimenting again 😀 And again I’ll give you a few examples of what I have painted so far:

Well that’s it for now. I’ll be uploading more later on 😉

Mehr als nur Moiré

Seit einigen Wochen beschäftigen wir uns in Gestaltungslehre nun mit Moirés. Wir haben schon viele eigene Muster erschaffen und im Seminar vorgestellt.

Nun sollen wir uns etwas mehr darauf konzentrieren Dreidimensionalität in unsere Muster zu simulieren.  Um das zu erreichen haben wir einige Basisformen, die wir schon für die alten Moirés benutzt haben, genommen und mit ihnen etwas rumgespielt, verschiedene Kombinationen und Variationen ausprobiert. Später soll uns diese Übung bei der Umsetzung in ein echtes 3D Objekt (aus Papier) helfen.

Das Ziel ist also ein besseres Verständnis für Dreidimensionalität durch das Experimentieren mit simplen Linienanordnungen zu schaffen.

moiré

moiré stressing three-dimensionality

Modules – A better Understanding of Dimension

Right now everyone is working on modules in the Design Foundation Course. After creating more or less flat 2D reliefs this was the next step in understanding dimension. It’s really quite different from simply drawing something on paper.

There are a lot of new things one has to consider when going 3D! First of all you have to design your object with modular attributes. In this phase I made many quick sketches and made some modules out of paper on the fly to test their functionality. That’s were most mistakes can be found (and should be since it’s really time consuming to do everything all over again because you overlooked something). The second step is creating the construction draft. It’s best to use the computer for this part. It’s much more precise. Step three is choosing the right material (I used 250 g/m² copy paper and regular glue). In order to test the full range of combinations you’ll need at least 20 modules.

In my point of view the most important part is the designing phase. If you make mistakes here everything you produce later on is meaningless in the end. That’s why you shouldn’t miss out on the testing phase! Although you can’t find every possible flaw you sure can avoid making major mistakes making all your efforts worthless. When I created my modules initially they did look sturdy but after constructing a few bigger units I realized the connections were too unstable. Therefore I had to redesign everything and start all over again 🙁

But now everything works out just fine 🙂

module1module2

Beyond Moirés

It’s been a while since I last posted something on the design foundation course. Perhaps you still remember the topic was “the moiré pattern” a few weeks ago. Well since then we created many moirés ourselves and presented them in class. Our next task is to try and concentrate some more on three-dimensionality. After designing some basic patterns we were supposed to play with them and try different combinations and variations. After that we will try transforming our work to a 3D object (probably made out of paper) and try some different color applications to underline the form.

These assignments are supposed to make us understand how three-dimensionality is created out of simple lines and forms. It’s a very experimental approach 🙂

So here is one of mine moirés and one pattern stressing three-dimensionality:

moiré

moiré

moiré stressing three-dimensionality

moiré stressing three-dimensionality

By the way, both patterns are created with the same fragments. I just rotated and scaled them differently.