Rebecca Genung: Week 10 Serial Slice

NOTE: The scars are only on the one side

For this project I wanted to do something culturally significant to my heritage (I'm mainly Scoto-Norse) so I went with the most impressive beast of both the Celtics and Norse: Dragons. In pre-christian Celtic mythology dragons are natural beings who are either sea serpents (such as the Mester Stoor Worm) or impossibly large beasts who make up mountain ranges. As I started working on a earthly dragon ( a sea dragon would have fins and other protrusions that would violate the "closed fist"-like rule) I wanted to focus the design. I took inspiration from the Norse side and decided to make my interpretation of Fáfnir. Fáfnir was a Dwarf who murdered his brother for treasure from the Æsir (long story) and slowly turned into a dragon from his greed. He was eventually slain by the hero Sigurðr (another long story). My design originally was much more menacing; with protruding teeth and jaw horns. Unfortunately, these didn't read well in the sliced version and I removed them.

For technique, I modeled the head in ZBrush (about 40 minutes to make) with vertical cutting specifically in mind. Still, I had to snip the last ring from his bottom chin to meet the no double rings requirement. I'm a little worried about how many cut sheets I used, but making the model small enough to fit on less sheets cut away too much detail for me to be comfortable with. The main problem is that there are many layers of large size in the mid-section of the bust.

I wanted to take advantage of my model's asymmetry. The first concept is a marble statue that somehow survived through the ages. The KeyShot material is called Granite Gray (I added some aluminum coloring).
The second concept was that this was a lost treasure of some sort: maybe Jade or Malachite. The KeyShot material is called Tempting Turquoise.

Ideally, I could mount this on my wall as a conversation starter (I already have several odd things of similar nature for my future parlor). I've considered adding a papier-mâché skin so I can paint scales, glowing eyes, etc.

Tara Intyrath: Serial Slice

Concept: For this projects concept I wanted to focus on my favorite animal, wolves. I have been in love with wolves since I was a child after reading a book about them for a school project. They fascinate me and I have yet to design anything using a wolf so I thought to take this chance. A full wolf would have taken me far too long to model so I decided to go with the neck up of the animal.

Technique: I had a lot of difficulty working with this model as I haven't modeled something so organic before. I first took the approach of trying to edit a sphere or a box and shape it into that of a wolf head but all the vertices were very confusing. My second approach was to create curves of the wolf using google images as references and to create surfaces off those curves. I found that much easier to do and divided the head into four parts; the nose, main face area, the neck, and then the ears. I had lots trouble getting sweep or surface network to work properly or have an outcome I was satisfied with. It turned out a lot of my curves were not intersecting properly so I learned to make the curves into segments to get a better fit and then joining those segments together to make things work properly. I ended up using sweep2 for the whole process to create the surfaces. To make the swirls and detail of the eyes I made a flat curve and used project to get the curves to wrap around the model, offset them, made them into surfaces then solids, and boolean differenced them. I used various other commands such as join, to join my curves and surfaces once I created them, cap planar holes, and boolean join. Creating the contour lines, unrolling them, and making a spread sheet was the easy part of this project.

Materials: For the laser cut material I decided to stick with the .25 cardboard available at the Fab Lab as it was a cheaper solution and I also wanted to see how the ridges or the insides of the cardboard would look once cut out, hoping it would give an interesting outcome. Gratefully, it came out very well done. My model due to its shape and size has a lot of shapes and parts that aren't in one piece though in the same layer slice which is why I had to go with four rods. I decided to use threaded rods so I could tighten the slices together and ended up liking the "Frankenstein" look of it so left them in. I am very happy with the results of the real model. For my keyshots, I decided to choose a clear acrylic/plastic material and a metal material. I chose these two materials because I wanted to see what it would look like in various materials and hope to maybe make a serious out of these wolf heads.

Victoria Mayfield: Serial Slice

Concept: For this project I really struggled when it came to deciding on a model that I was pleased with. I went through a few different prototypes before I decided on the design that I serial sliced. I knew I wanted to stick with a modern design, and dabble in suspension with the posts. I was inspired by modern cake designs, as well as decorative cupcake stands. I decided to stick with the modern theme and create something that could be showcased as a modern piece of art. 

Modeling: One of the main modeling techniques I used to achieve this piece was the polar array tool. This was the tool that I used to create a box, then create a tight array which gave me the star effect that I liked. I was then able to group those boxes, duplicate that whole tier, and scale is a bit smaller. This was how I achieved the four separate tiers. I then used the torus tool to create a band around each tier, which I used boolean difference to cut that section out. This left each tier with a nice hourglass shape. I created the 6 posts out of basic cylinders and decided to incorporate them into my design and have each tier be suspended. 

Materials: The material I chose for each tier in my keyshot is a frosted glass. I chose this material to stick with my modern theme. The glass is what I imagined the sculpture to be made of since it would be a purely decorative piece. I decided to make the internal posts a bold, bright red metal. I felt like this added some interest to the sculpture and made it more interesting and pleasing to the eye. For my actual serial slice I used MDF wood, then just basic wooden dowels for the support posts. I love how the laser burns the edges of the wood when it has been completely cut through, and this was the effect I wanted to achieve. Then I was able to just glue each serial sliced tier together, and use hot glue to suspend each tier along the posts. In the future I would like to experiment more with paints, as well as different materials.