ATEC-FAB UTDallas : An Nguyen: project 4

Saturday, December 3, 2022

An Nguyen: project 4 - Serial Slicing

Concept

The attached collage below is a collection of 10 creations/characters. I started off with the shape of her burst with the similar shape of Mike from Monster Inc. To make my creation different from the original Mike, I give her a goggle inspired by characters in a video game Among Us instead of the iconic big eye. I really love Grogu/ Baby Yoda so I give her long ears like him. When I glanced at Pascal, Rapunzel’s chameleon, I had the idea to give her some spikes but big and sharp like a dinosaur. My design is simply a combination of many characters that I chose in my reference images. I think the conceptual development from my inspiration to the sketch is quite good, well representing the unique parts from reference characters.

Collage of Ref. Images

Sketch

Process

One of the 5 commands that I used is Rebuild, in order to create more control points to change the shape of an object. I created her body by first creating a sphere and increasing the control points by Rebuild command. After that, I clicked and dragged the control points to turn the sphere into Mike’s head shape. I only reshaped half of the sphere and used Mirror Commands to duplicate the other side so the two sides are symmetrical. One obstacle I had when I was using the Rebuild command to reshape the object is that I could click the wrong points and shape the object weirdly. I overcame it by doing it slowly and looking at many viewports at a time to make sure I grabbed the right control points. I used Extract Isocurve to pick up the curve of her back so that later I can line the spikes correctly following the curve of her back. With that curve, I created a pyramid to be the spike and multiplied them by using ArrayCrv. With ArrayCrv, the pyramids/spikes are quickly multiplied, equally spaced out, and perfectly laid on the curve of her back. The fifth command that I used is Offset Surface. I used this command to turn the goggle from a planar surface to a solid goggle. I had a difficult time learning how to make the goggles solid. I tried to use the Extrude command but it didn't work. My final solution is to create a planar surface from the outline of the goggles and use Offset Surface to turn that planar surface into solid. Pros to 3D modeling is that my model is simple and straightforward so I had the ideas of what commands I need to use and how I can create all the parts of her. I found the most difficult part of building her is to turn the outlines of her parts into solid objects. I planned in my head that I would use Extrude but it didn’t work so I had to watch videos and tried many ways to have all her parts solid and attached to her body.

Rhino: Orthography in Ghosted black and Layers Panel

Rendering and Fabrication:

In Keyshot, I used Cloth Weave White for the body and the ears because it has a crossed pattern. I could not find a paper material or texture so I chose this material which gives out the look of paper. I chose Paint Texture for the goggles. I simply used a 3 medium light for the gray background orthography. The intended environment for her is her in the countryside and being pulled into a UFO. I tried to make a spotlight on the UFO and pointed down at her.

I think the post processing part went well for me since all the parts like her ears, her goggles, and her spikes are built in/ attached to her body. When I put all the parts together, the two rods just keep all pieces in place and easily build her into shape. However, there are two spikes missing some pieces so I had to cut and glued paper to fill in the missing. For paper mache, I used paper tissue instead of newspaper because that was the material that I had access to. If there’s anything I could have done differently, I would use newspaper instead because I think it would create a smooth surface compared to the bumpy surface of the paper tissue. I made two layers of paper mache. The process of paper mache wasn’t bad. It was just a matter of time to glue paper on and wait for it to dry. After paper mache, I painted her and the post processing was done.