Rian MacBride - Project 4: Serial Slicing a Creature

 Project 4: Serial Slicing a Creature

Concept

    My inspiration came from a few different alien and armor designs. I wanted to create a helmet-like shape and took inspiration from the security armor and Deimosborn armor from Halo and Destiny, respectively. Both are references to the security armor you wear in the game Marathon, another game by Bungie from the 90s. I also took inspiration from the aliens from Marathon, Plo Koon from the Star Wars franchise, and the Xenomorph from the Aliens franchise. I wanted to create a sort of mask design for the creature. My original drawing had the eye mask wrap around the head and sort of squish it, though this idea was cut later due to the restraints of modeling with layers and slicing. 

Process

    When starting out with the modeling, I had absolutely no idea where to begin. I created a few trivial shapes and threw them at each other, creating something that resembled what I drew and envisioned for a head. I made a few curves and joined them with the loft command. This ended up being the base of the bust, resembling the shoulders and torso. I tinked and toiled with the model for weeks before I almost completely scrapped the head design and redid it the Monday before Thanksgiving break. I made some drawings for the design of the nose-tusk-tendril design and extruded it out. I gave it a chamfer and doubled it. The head took some more trial and error, but I created a half dome, then carved out the arc design on the front with various trim and snip tools. I played a lot with creating a mask design that would fit over the helmet, but in the end, decided to just merge the two and create a sort of bowl-shaped helmet to go over an almost alien-looking, thin head. I used three quarter-inch rods placed in the *center of the helmet to keep everything together as well.

*Center is a rough estimate. The poles were not perfectly aligned to the center, they were simply placed where it got most of the model covered. This lack of centering proved to be a pain when assembling the final product. 

Rendering

    It was after I had the pieces in hand that I decided to do something different. I decided to remove every other layer on the model. This creates a sort of floating effect on the bust, and I really liked the look of it. As I had already cut out all 82 layers, however, I had all the layers for a full model, so I made two. One I left blank and empty, both as a way to practice and experiment with how to do the final and to have a way to compare a raw model to a finished model. In the finished version I put a light bulb inside the main head. I had an extra chord from the makercase lamp project, and it was a great size to use here. The final would have a layer of black paint on it, and part of the helmet would be covered in chrome to reflect more of the light and bounce it around. I quickly broke apart the model into every other layer and modeled a chord to plug into the light (though I forgot to screenshot this as I did it in the rendering lab). In Keyshot, the unfinished version uses a dark walnut wood material with a concrete texture overlay. This gives the color and finish of cardboard, as well as the texture of a rough surface. I couldn't find a proper cardboard texture, but the rendering is quite close to the final, spare for the corrugated edges. The finished version uses black plastic and polished aluminum materials to make up the bust. The interior light is simply an emissive material set to a warm glow. Both models use a birch material on the dowels, as it resembles the actual dowel material and color the closest. 

Fabrication

    The first thing I did was organize the layers. There were 81 in total (spare for a missing layer 1, so the very first layer is actually labeled 2), so I organized them by odds and evens. The unfinished model uses all the odd numbered layers (3-81) while the finished, painted model uses the even (2-82). Once organized, I cut down some dowels, still leaving them oversized to cut down later, and started assembly. Each missing layer has a quarter-inch spacer made up of two 1/8th inch pieces of cardboard glued together. The first model I made was the unfinished/raw model. This allowed me to experiment and learn what I should do for the final, finished model. Prototyping is a wonderful strategy, and having essentially two models to build allowed me to learn from the first and make the second version better. Using more than one spacer was a must to keep everything level and aligned properly, and making sure the dowel rods were straight was also something I had to keep track of. The raw model has a severe leaning problem, as the nose/mask/tendril extrusion makes the head surprisingly top heavy. The first 8 layers of the finished model had four spacers each - one in the middle, one on the left and right side, and one on the front. This helped the model not lean forward so much, as the front and side spacers kept the bottom layers in place. The finished model got a few coats of black protective primer spray-paint, and the top 16 layers got a few coats of metallic chrome spray paint. This was done in an attempt to have light bounce off each layer and come out the edges better. I cut out a recess for the light bulb in the head which allowed room for the socket and bulb. Upon completion, I think I would have put the socked further down into the black layers, so as to allow the light to hit every chromed layer. I also would have cut out openings in every single chrome layer, and not just the middle sections. Because I didn't do this however, the top few layers are removable for easy access to the bulb, in case it needs changing or other issues arise.