Chanlyr Jordan: UFO Model in FlatFab
Poly Styrene: Singer, Musician and Punk/Riot Grrrl Pioneer
Concept
In the spirit of keeping a common theme, I've elected for Project 3 to design a little UFO desk toy in FlatFab. For those of you keeping score, yes, technically my theme is Kurt Vonnegut, and, yes, a life-size bust in FlatFab would be awesome. Unfortunately, my skills are not that awesome (yet), so I made this cute little abstract sculpture that I imagine would fit beautifully on somebody's desk; preferably mine. Though it is not immediately related to or inspired by Kurt Vonnegut, I'll just say it is for the heck of it. He's had plenty of UFO's in his books. As Poly Styrene-- front-woman of punk pioneers X-Ray Spex-- (pictured above) famously sang, "I live off you / you live off me / and the whole world / lives off everybody / see we gotta be exploited / by somebody, by somebody, by somebody." In this case, I'm the one exploiting Vonnegut for some quick inspiration. The cat eats the rat. In any case, I had a lot of fun rigging up this UFO to try and balance. I'm still not sure if it would be perfect in a real-world situation, but a heavy dab of ye olde Cyanoacrylate would probably do the trick. I've also always liked the idea of having a larger-than-usual toy to fidget with on my desk, and watching this little monster with its swinging dome-top and balancing act of a tractor beam at the bottom sounds like a hoot 'n' a holler 'n' a half.
Technique
The technique on this project was much more straightforward than others. I sketched out a rough idea of how I thought the UFO might look, and then that sketch was never followed. Once I got into FlatFab, everything I had considered flew out the window and I was subjected to the will and whimsy of the green blobs. I went through so so so many iterations and files before I even got to one that began to resemble a UFO. You can watch the tutorials and puff your chest out and say that you're a big boy, but once you're close to the metal... anything can happen. Once I got the camera to focus goodness gracious and the shapes to cooperate, I was able to construct the core circle that the UFO spine-thingies are rotated around. From there I worked on building up some elements to create interest, like the tractor beam, which also acts as a handy dandy little base for the UFO to balance on. An original concept for the UFO had an entire linear generation for the stand, but I thought the free-flowing and sparse base would make it more fun and intriguing. I've always been fascinated by the more abstract side of fabrication so this was my short fore into that realm. Overall, I'm happy with how it ended up looking (and maybe balancing).
Materials
For the online portion of this assignment I used Photoshop and Illustrator to make these mockups, besides, of course, FlatFab and Rhino for the actual modelling, concept, and the proper cut sheet formatting. The help of Google Images cannot be discounted either, as it helped me find the image of that small European town square that I used for my architectural rendering (shown above). They also gave me that picture of Poly Styrene (may she rest in peace).
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