Concept
The concept for my design originated when I tried to find an object that had 'slices' as a part of its structure. That caused me to look into the guiro, an instrument that can either be a hollow, gourd-like shape or shaped like animals, such as a frog. In order to create an original concept, I decided to strip the inspiration to its base structure: varying arches that can be hit to produce a sound. As I also wanted to experiment with how the serial slices were attached, I decided to divide each arch into sections that would have some spacing in between. This created a rib-like appearance, later influencing the color and design choices for the final sculpture. When looking for inspiration when post-processing, I looked into how guiros were adorned and looked at how they seemed similar to the designs on alebrijes. As such, I chose a bright color palette that would include some patterns.
Techniques
To create the model, I used Maya as I am much more familiar with the software. I started by first using the polygon torus command to create a ring that would act as a base for my arches. I selected the bottom half of the faces and deleted them, using the fill hole command to seal and establish the arch I needed. Next, I duplicated the arch six times, parenting them to each other to them move each an equal distance. I then used the polygon cylinder command to create a cylindrical base that would hold the arches into place. Once the base shape was made, I took the model to Rhino.
Once in Rhino, I selected the arches and used the make hole command to create holes for the arches to insert into. The same method was used when creating the holes for the dowels to go into the base of the project. Due to the ease of the process, the stick was made by having a long cylinder that would be used as the base. Next, a sphere was added to the top while two slightly thicker cylinders were used as the handle. Holes were cut into them using the make hole command. Once the model was complete, I used the contour command in two manners. The first was to create horizontal slices for the base of the structure, the stick's handle, and the stick's tip. The second was to create the vertical cuts that would be used on the arches. Once the curves for the slices were made, I extruded them using the extrude planar curve command, creating solids for each of the slices. Having no issues with the cuts made by contouring, I took each of the cuts and organized them as either inner or outer cuts to cut them out for the physical project. Each of the pieces was labeled with either numbers or letters, depending on which object the piece corresponded to.
Materials
I applied a rough maple wood texture as a base for each of the pieces. Next, I added labels to each piece that matched their base color of navy blue, pink, yellow, or orange. Once the base colors were added, I created labels via Adobe Illustrator that would match the patterns on portions of the base, arches, and stick. After placing those labels, I made sure to mark each as paint surfaces and added a bump map of rough maple wood. The lighting base setting used was 'interior' alongside an hdri of a warmly lit room to allow the colors of paint to be softened. The chosen appropriate environment was a music room as that is where it would likely be found. The model was positioned in a way where it can have visible scale compared to other objects with the room.
For the post-processing, I first sanded each of the pieces so that they were evenly smooth, especially since two kinds of woods were used: sande plywood and birch. Once the sanding was finished, I glued together the base circles, the stick, and the arches with loctite super glue to make painting easier. After partial assembly, the base coats of each acrylic paint color were added. Once the base coats were added, I used posca pens to draw on the stripes on each of the arches, adding the dots with both acrylic paint and poscas as needed on the remainder of the pieces. After the painting was complete, I glued together each of the pieces to their proper places. Lastly, I sealed the paint with a spar urethane finish.
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