Randall Villegas: Week 10 Serial Slice

     Concept: When I was younger I went to mexico and visited Teotihuacan which housed many beautiful structures, most notably the Pyramid of the Moon and Pyramid of the Sun. Seeing the layering from the slices reminded me of the pyramids and led to the inspiration of this project. I also wanted to keep the project simple as this is a medium I am not familiar with and I wanted to really worry about the polish of the project more than intense and crazy detail, especially since a lot of the form and interest from detail gets lost in slice progress. I did change my design to something more Mayan, but the aesthetic if very similar.

     Modeling: I created my base by using the curve tool and extruding to the desired height. I alt dragged to copy the size for the upper segments and scaled them to size as I went. The top is two box's booleaned together to add some distinction to it. I created the stairs by making a custom curve and extrude to get the basic shape. I scaled it down some to cut out the center to give some railing on the side and, after using boolean difference, revolved it around the other sides. I then used boolean union to bring everything together for the final model.

     Materials: For materials, I wanted to first do a proxy of what a wooden material would look like, something akin to how the serial slicing would truly come out. I chose a lighter color to give a greater attention to the form of the object. For the other material, I decided on something more true to form and went with a stone look. a worn, dark grey would be the most accurate and I went with that look. For the physical piece I will use MDF.

Physical Assembly: I set up the first and largest piece of my structure and set my dowels inside. For each subsequent piece, I would shimmy them down the dowels until I had just enough room to add some glue and would quickly add Loctite to the perimeter. I would then press the piece flat and use some textbooks to keep some applied pressure while the adhesive bonded.I cut the remainder of the dowels off and looked for/cleaned off any excess glue. I definitely need to go back and add some kind of putty to the spots where the dowels are, this is something I overlooked and would really finish the piece off.