Imran Shakoor: Week 2 Crystal Mace (Hammer)

Concept: The inspiration for this came from the energy associated with crystals and vibrations, of which tuning forks are used therapeutically for. Looking at a tuning fork, it already has a handle and the the base perpendicular shape of a hammer so I thought it could be turned into something related it to it. Gems and crystals can be cut in any which way or form and could be accessorized with the tuning fork to create some type of hammer shape / weapon. In addition, they tend to have sharp points which added to the weapon idea. The idea in the final design is that with the power of the crystals and vibrational energy created with the tuning fork, the steel of the fork is able to become malleable  and bent in any which way to become string like and hold the mace part/swing it around. It is a fantastical concept but utilizes real life ideas. 432 signifies 432 Hertz, which is the most common and best sounding vibration for humans.

Process: The process started with sculpting the tuning fork. I used interpolate points to create the forked bars and extruded them upwards. I then attached  the cylindrical handle to the bottom, and chamfered and filleted the bottom of the handle to give it a cleaner look. In addition, I blended the surface of the top of the cylinder and the bottom of the fork for a smooth transition to look as one. I then use the twist function to twist the upper half of the tuning fork. I created the large gem pieces with a 6 sided extruded polygon, and with a hexagon pyramid on top of them. If you look closely, the 2 large crystals are actually one long one broken, signified by the chamfered edge where the two meet to look like the crystal was cracked in half. I slid one side on the handle, and the other I placed in between the twist. This was the base of it. For the string like section I interpolated points and used Rail 1 with multiple cross sections along the rail to give it the thinning look. The mace area was just a sphere around the crystals and the metal portion that sticks out and covers part of each section were created with the crystals enlarged, cut, filleted, and then boolean differenced to subtract a hole for the crystals to stick out of. The mini crystals along the side are groups of 5 individually placed, and the 432 was made by created the number in blocks and subtracting it from the surface.

Materials: For the materials I used polish steel and Green gems as well as Purple gems. I feel like these two colors went nice with this version of metal. I slightly adjusted each of the colors for both of them. I tried to get the lighting right so you could see the reflections in the metal and gems of all the objects.