Kenneth Kornfeld: Who Will You Feed? - Serial Slices

     The next step in the Who Will You Feed? Project is to create a 16 inch version of the relief using Serial slicing with a laser cutter.As a reminder:

    "Who Will You Feed? was inspired by the Cherokee parable known as the Two Wolves (First People). This parable tells a story about a boy and his grandfather who teaches his grandson a concept that their is two wolves that exist in all of us who are in a constant state of battle. One wolf represents everything that is good and selfless while the other wolf represents everything that is evil and selfish. The boy asks his grandfather "How do you know which wolf will win the battle?"  The Grandfather replies "It is the one I choose to feed"(First People). 

     To represent the Two Wolves parable I sculpted a wolf skull onto a bust in Autodesk program Mudbox. The left side the skull is dirty, scratched and scared to represent the bad wolf and the right side is almost untouched to represent the good wolf. After I finished the skull I brought it into the Autodesk program Maya to remove the skull from its original bust because the model had become to dense with polygons. When I was done removing the skull from the but I imported back into a mud box and placed it on top of a new bust. I kept the face of the bust featureless so that it would be more ambiguous and I added a hoodie to add an influence of Little Red Riding Hood and the Grim Reaper. I felt that the Grim Reaper was an appropriate representation of the wolf in Native American culture since the wolf is often represented as judge, jury and executioner. I sculpted wolf ears onto the hoodie so it would look more like a wolf."

you can read about the first half of the project here
Kenneth Kornfeld: Week 1 Who Will You Feed?

     The first step of this process was to create the rhino file for laser cutting. To do this I brought the obj file for the relief into rhino and scaled it up to my desired size. After that I inserted two  1/4 inch rods to the model and used the Contour command to slice up the object into thin slices. When that was done I carefully laid out the slices on a flat plane within a 2' x 4' rectangle that represented the card board that it will be inserted cut from. I also numbered every piece and made sure that all the pieces laid flat within the card board sheet it was assigned too. When I was done I took it to the fab lab to be printed.

In Keyshot I created a rendering of what the serial sliced relief should look like, this rendering is a different from my final concept. I chose a wood rendering because a few people suggest that I make a wood version and leave it as is. The final version will have cardboard or wood with stone and moss elements.

     Next I Laid out all the pieces on a table and made sure every piece was there.

     Then slid two 1/4 inch wooden dowel into the two holes on my first piece that were create when I added the two 1/4 inch rods to my model. Then I applied Loctite Professional Super Glue to my second piece and slid through the dowels until it was pressed cleanly against the first piece.

     I repeated this process until the relief was completely assembled

     After the relief was assembled it was time to get it prepared for the hard shell, to do this I covered the entire model in masking tape except for the sections that I did not want to cover in the shell. When I was done applying the tape I mixed up some aqua resin and applied it the entire taped surface. Once the first coat was dry I went back and mixed up another batch of aqua resin but this time I added some thickener to give it a harder bumpier shell.  Once the shell hardened I brought the relief outside and sanded off the most elevated parts of the surface. This gave it a more stone like feel,

     After I cut off the excess parts of the shell the relief is not ready to be painted.

     The first layer of paint was the most important layer of paint since it will add texture and a better surface to paint on. I mixed a dark grey paint with a sand medium to create a more stone like texture over the entire piece to make it feel more like stone. This layer took the longest because paint had to be thick and could not be thinned out with water. I also had to make sure every spot was thoroughly painted

     After the texture layer was done I then added 7 more layers of paint the first 4 layers were to tint the first layer in the multiple gradients. The fifth layer was added to darken the recesses of the sculpture and the last two layers were to add a sense of wear to the sculpture by highlighting the elevated points of the sculpture. 

     Afterwards I coated the cardboard with XTC - 3D to add more durability to the cardboard, this also gave it a more glossy wood look.

3rd Layer    |       5th Layer    |    7th Layer

      The Next step was to add a little moss using a glue and some foliage for making scenery models. This will give it a more stone like feel and add an additional element to the piece.

      The concept behind this versions of Who Will You Feed?  was to create this artifact that would feel like it could be found by a future civilization a "temple" from our civilization. To do this I wanted to create an contrast between ancient forms of sculpting (stone) and modern sculpting(cardboard).

      Also I wanted to use a contrast of Realism art where you are trying to be precise an accurate as possible and the most recent form of art that I can only describe as "Retro Stylized Art". This from of art I would describe as being a form of art where the piece can  be more refined and precise that what it is, so that you can show the grit of how it is made and use it as a texture. I would describe Pepakura and Pixel Art as part of this latest art genre. I used this contrast to describe the two side of the wolf skull. The "Good" side being the smooth refined half and the "Bad" side being the ridged half.

     I wanted the moss to give the viewer the chance to ask themselves "Which side is really the bad side?" since the moss only grows on the ridged ruff side of the sculpture, if it is so bad why would life choose to grow their. The left side has more flat surface and shade due to the ridges and the right side is smooth and exposed to the son. It own perfection leaves next to no room for the moss to grow.