Ashley D Goodenough: Pepakura "On the Surface"

Concept: My Pepakura design is called “On the Surface.” I was inspired by water gardens I’ve been to in DFW and Atlanta, and wanted to recreate the feeling of serenity and peace that the koi ponds at botanical and water gardens have.  I also wanted to play with the idea that the ground could be like the surface of a pond, reflecting the objects just above it and “completing” an image. I designed a koi fish half out of water, swimming between two differently sized lily pads that create balance and visual harmony.

Modeling: I modeled my two objects (lily pad and koi fish) in Maya, then brought them into Rhino for some final editing. After making sure I definitely had a mesh object, I exported both as .objs and brought them into Pepakura Designer. Using Pepakura, I cut both models into strategic loops, then unfolded them and arranged them on the grids. I ended up with two 24x48” sheets for the koi, 2 for the large lily pad, and 1 for the small lily pad. I made sure my edge IDs were visible in Pepakura (and also assigned magenta and blue to the different cuts and folds), then saved a .eps (for edge IDs) and a .dxf (for cut and fold lines) to be combined in Illustrator. In Illustrator, I overlaid the text edges with the cutline/mountain/valley .dxf file, and then brought it all back into Rhino for final adjustments and layer assignments. I had to make some changes to the dot-dash and dash line types for mountain and valley folds to make them distinguishable from each other when laser cut. I also needed to move and resize some of my edge IDs. Since this is my first pepakura project, I kept them all just for some insurance while I was constructing the pieces.

Materials: For my Keyshot renders, I did three passes: a diffuse pass for color info, an occlusion pass for contact shadows, and a shaded wireframe pass to emulate the pepakura look that the piece has in real life. I used Axalta lime green for the lilies and leather for the koi. With the leather texture, I turned off the bump map, changed the foreground and background colors, and increased the scale to 3000. For occlusion passes, I applied the Keyshot occlusion material to all objects. For the pepakura effect, I applied the Keyshot shaded wireframe material to all objects.

White e-flute cardboard was used for my fabricated pepakura, which I then taped off with white masking tape after assembling with Loctite Pro.  I finished the pieces by coating them with a layer of polyurethane, then I painted some areas with acrylic paint, but kept some of the surface unpainted so that you can still see how the pieces were created. After that, I sealed them with a satin polyacrylic coat to give it shine and protect the paint. 

Ashley D Goodenough: Serial Slices, "Pollen"

Concept: I've been thinking about pollen and other allergens a lot lately, since it's the season for it. I thought it would be an interesting idea to take something that makes my life so difficult and abstract it. Then, I could in turn make it into something beautiful that I would appreciate rather than hate. I tried to give my design the same vibrant feeling as some of the electron microscope images you see of pollen and other unimaginably tiny living things in the microcosmos.

All laid out on the ground plane and numbered after contouring/serial slicing.

Modeling: This was interesting trip. Modeling precise geometric forms like polyhedrons can get tricky, and you need to know exact interior angles to get it right.  My design was a regular dodecahedron made up of all pentagons. I started it in Maya, since it seemed easier to get the angles and specific rotation around a point correct with Maya's universal manipulation tools. I then exported the .obj into Rhino and finished it up by added the irregular holes on each pentagonal face (using interpolate on surface curves, then curve extrusion and booleanDifference) and filleting the edges. I wanted this object to be interesting from every angle, so every side is different. To finish it up, I used "contour" command to get my serial slices (after placing my object and support structures on the inner and outer cut layers), and then snapped each group to the 24"x48" laser bed reference plane. I used ProjectToCPlane to make sure everything was on the ground plane. To make assembling it easy, I numbered each group on the text engrave layer.

Materials: For my renders, I did something mildly creepy. I wanted this object to feel very organic, so I applied a human skin texture to it, then changed up the top color and the "under the skin" color to get the mottled green appearance I was interested in emulating that I'd seen in electron microscope images of pollen. I tried a few different variations, and I think the last version works the best.

Fabrication! I really think this turned out well, so I'm going to post a lot of photos. The object definitely has interest from all angles, and I would argue that you have to see it in person and hold it to appreciate the detail and its form. I decided to spray paint it a really vibrant turquoise color, and then to add some interest and highlight the contours by gold-leafing the edges of the cardboard.

Early assemblage. Views from the top, and one angle from the side.

Spray painting in progress. Gold edges next. You really have to see this from several different angles to get an idea of its overall form. I can tell you it's a regular dodecahedron, but it's hard to picture the 3D version of a pentagon.

And some detail shots! The gold leaf treatment really makes the edges of the cardboard accent the holes. It has kind of a surreal terrain, other-worldly feel to it, like each cavern has secret details you have to look inside to discover.

Tara Intyrath : Laser Cut

Concept: As I was looking through my journal of inspirations I came up with the idea to create a mash-up of my favorite works that inspire me as I want to frame or have the laser engrave mounted onto my wall so I could look at, be inspired, or just for admiring. I am greatly inspired by oriental/Asian art so I chose two images that inspire me the most to use. One of them images is from an unknown artist. I have this picture on the front page of my inspiration journal and no matter how much I search and cannot seem to find the artist but it has inspired me for as long as I can remember. The second I chose to add in the wave from Katsushika Hokusai's work, The Great Wave Off Kanagawa.

Technique: The techniques I used were fairly simple. I scanned in the image of girl from my journal and put it into photoshop. I darkened the image as much as I could and then imported the darkened image into illustrator. I found that when I tried to use image trace the lines were much to light to see and I only got the hair so I had to make my own strokes to shape the rest of the body. The wave was much simpler to image trace and I made some of my own edits to it erasing parts of the wave to make it look a little fragmented. I chose to have the wave a deeper raster than the girl to separate the two images. 

Materials: For my engraving material, I chose a birch plywood because I quite liked the light color of it. I am very satisfied with the finished product and plan to add a light stain to the piece and mount it on my wall.

Ashley Goodenough: Laser Engraving, "Fear and Safety"

"Fear and Safety"

Concept: This laser engraving project began with an original piece of mine that is an ongoing study of texture, gradient, and figure/ground relationships (photo above). I have multiple versions of the piece, and would be interested in doing a series on different materials, starting with tile. For the first one, I chose a version that represents the contrast between fear and safety. My interpretation of the image has several possible figures: a being with wings (like an angel), a claw reaching upward, a pair of lungs, or a mouth overflowing with teeth. Out of the four possibilities, two of them inspire fear, and the other two inspire a sense of comfort/safety. The dichotomy of the two ideas creates the feeling of unease that I was aiming for, and the texture and gradients overlaid on the figures can alternately encourage or confuse each of these interpretations.

Modeling: First, I made sure I had a high quality photo of the art in good lighting. I then brought it into Adobe Illustrator and image traced it. After getting the vectors, I pulled it into Photoshop and posterized the image so that I would have 4-5 different values of gray. I intended to do a raster engraving of the image with this file. After an initial test on my material (birch wood), it became clear that a raster engraving was going to be too muddy, and I decided it would look much cleaner as a stamp. I brought the file into Rhino, rebuilt all of the curves to simplify the image, and deleted smaller curves that were only going to cause issues when I applied a medium engrave setting. I then used the Hatch command to fill in the areas I wanted to be engraved, and I left the rest unhatched. When medium engraved, this resulted in an image that looks a lot cleaner and more dynamic. 

before polyurethane coating

during coating

after coating

Materials: I started with a panel of birch wood, but I intend to continue this series on a variety of materials. I also bought an off-white patterned tile on which I’d like to engrave a different version of this piece. The birch wood served me well, with the exception of a little burning along one edge of the wood when the machine was finishing the outer cut. I was planning on sanding out the burned section, but decided that the burn provided another unintended level of texture that wasn’t there before. The medium engrave was very consistent and a good tint on the wood. I finished the piece by coating it in two layers of polyurethane with a satin finish, since I wanted it to be sealed but not too shiny, so that I didn’t completely lose the appearance of the wood texture. The lighting in the pictures above are not consistent, but with the polyurethane coating, the piece actually has a more contrast between the light and dark sections.

Bonus Update: I fabricated an additional version of this piece. I'm calling it "Echoed Motion." The grass and sweater textures in this image appear to be moving or waving in the same direction like they're being pushed by wind, and it gives it a sense of movement that is echoed by the pattern on the ceramic tile it's engraved in. The tile is 12"x18" and has a varied geometric glaze in off-white. After engraving, I pushed several layers of charcoal into the grout, using a paper towel to get an even coating. I then finished it with Krylon Crystal Clear to prevent the charcoal from escaping from the grout.

This is before the charcoal treatment. It's interesting at this stage, but you can't see all the detail of the engraving. However, it does give you an idea of the original glaze pattern on the tile.

Where the glaze was cut into more deeply by the laser, the charcoal stayed darker. Very cool echo of the engraved design. Here are some detail shots so you can see how the charcoal stuck to the deeper cuts and was easily wiped off of the other areas.