Concept: My concept for this project was mostly to come up with something interesting yet limited. I wanted to explore what I could figure out through a mix of tutorials and experimentation. I had different ideas originally going from a stylized bird, a paper weight, or a pencil holder. I found these ideas hard to create with what I understood. Over the course of experimenting I reached the point where my concept settled on created a large toy top, capable of being spun using the palms of ones hands. It would also be reasonable since the population added onto the top would increase the bulkiness of the top.
Techniques: Over the course of this project I learned how to identify when a model is a nurbs surface due to many trial and errors, where I would mistakingly make a polysurface. I practiced using the different tools such as the line tool, curve tool, curve network, lofting, boolean combine, and revolve tool. I'm not entirely sure how I ended up with a polysurface with some but I learned that I could reliably create a valid surface for grasshopper by using the curve tool, then lofting the the different segments into a surface, merging the separate surfaces together, and lastly populating them in grasshopper. I had gotten stuck quite a few times and had to refer back to the tutorials but after figuring out how to navigate the interface better and modeling the top to an acceptable degree the rest I picked up a bit quicker. Besides my process for constructing the top, I used the same process to create a population to use in grasshopper. This was because after trying a torus, some balloon like shapes, and having some failed models. I then decided the top would be both more aesthetically appealing an functional if I created a flattened quadrilateral, which I learned could be constructed through my process of lofting and merging curves into the shape. After I applied the material to the baked population, I checked for naked lines, double checked that my top was in centimeters, and began arranging the captures for the blog.
Material: The idea of making the top glass was an appealing thought simply because I thought it would look nice. It would likely also spin really well, but it would also probably be a safety risk since my idea for the top wasn't as mere decoration. I wanted it to be a toy and while glass can be hardened to a great degree, a very hard toy could be just as dangerous as a fragile one. So I decided the material should be plastic, which has a history of being used for toys due to its cheap material and sturdy build. Plastic is also light which would make the top easy to carry and spin, allowing the dim reflections and colors to blur together.
Revisions: For my blog revisions I went back and made a ghosted image shot which I had forgotten before. I also added my name and year to all my images and rescaled them to 2550 x 1650 pixels.
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