Victoria Mayfield & Jonathan Gloria: Purple Rain Pepakura

Concept: When we first began trying to come up with ideas for a successful pepakura project, we knew we wanted to do something from nature. We researched different possibilities like trees, mountains, even rainbows. We ended up deciding on a raincloud. We then decided to model a lightning bolt as well as raindrops to be suspended by fishing line.

Modeling: The modeling was pretty basic. We used Maya for most of our modeling, and Rhino for scaling. For the cloud, we created a sphere, extruded it and pulled it into the general shape we wanted. Then we used the sculpt geometry tool to pull out the bumps of the cloud. We used rhino to create the lightning bolt. For that, we simply created the main body shape using the curve tool, I then extruded that curve, and capped off the open faces. The rain drops were created in Maya by simply extruding a box multiple times, and merging the vertices on each side to one point. We then used Rhino to scale three different sizes of the raindrops to create some interest using size.

Materials: For the materials, we used eflute cardboard, as it is best for pepakura. We then went over the seams of the cloud with white duct tape to give the cloud a more uniform shape and feel. For the raindrops, we decided to coat them in purple glitter to commemorate Prince after his tragic passing. From there, I used an exacto knife to cut organic lightning shapes into the lightning bolt, and lined the inside of the bolt with LED lights. This created a really nice effect when the LEDs would reflect off the purple glitter on the raindrops. I then used a thing white masking tape around the edges of the lightning bolt to hold everything together. We attached the rain drops and the lightning bolt to the bottom of the cloud with fishing line and super glue. Then used fishing line and a metal ring attached to the top of the cloud to create an apparatus to hang the cloud from. Overall, we are very pleased with how the project turned out and think it’s a beautiful homage to one of the greatest and most influential musical artists of our time.