Thessa Vu - Assignment 4 - Serial Slicing Creature

 Inspiration 

    I decided to base my creature on a variety of animals. The basic anatomy of my creature is that of a human. I wanted to add aspects of feathered creatures because I liked the flowy and graceful look, so I made it into the hair of my creature. I also added antlers to incorporate aspects of a deer into it. I decided to give my creature a tree theme, so the antlers are made of wood and the feathers are colored like leaves. The face of the creature is not based on anything, but I wanted to give it a minimal look. The eyes are just dots to make the creature look mysterious and otherworldly.

References

Concept

Process

    

    For modeling my creature, I first started by making the base. I created an oval shaped cylinder and then used the fillet tool to round off the top for the shoulders. Then, I created a cylinder for the neck. After, I created a sphere using the subD tool and modeled the head. As I worked on the head, I used the mirror tool to make sure that both sides were equal. After I finished creating the shapes I wanted, I used the Boolean join tool to combine all the pieces together. I also used the subD and mirror tool to create the antlers. After I sliced the image, I extruded everything and used the change layer tool to move each item that would have its own material assigned to it onto different layers.

    As I was modeling my project, I had an easy time using the subD tool with the mirror tool. It allowed me to form the shapes that I wanted easily. However, I had a problem turning the model into a solid object after I was finished with it. After I Boolean differenced out the rods and sliced the image, the rods did not go all the way through. So in the end, I laser cut all the pieces and put the head together without the use of the rods. Also, there was a lot of small pieces created but the tips of the antlers when modeling. So after laser cutting, I decided to just leave out all the small pieces and make the antlers short.

Rhino - Ghosted - Layers

Rendering

    In keyshot, the main body of my model was assigned the material of rough maple wood. The antlers were given the material black walnut wood and the leaves were given green satin cloth. I used these materials to keep the tree theme of my creature.

Keyshot - 2D

Keyshot - Orthographic

Keyshot - Environment 1

Keyshot - Environment 2

Fabrication

    For my physical model, I laser cut the base of the cardboard at the machine shop. Then I combined every layer together with two dowel rods and glued it all together. The antler cardboard pieces had too many little pieces, so I decided to leave a lot of it out and ended up making it a lot shorter than in the rendered model. I used newspaper, flour, and water to paper mache the outer layer. I then painted the outside with acrylic paint. I decided to use white as the main color to keep the design simple and to allow for the leaves to stand out. After painting, I glued all the leaves onto the head and painted on the eyes.

Physical Model

Physical Model - Orthographic

Physical Model - 2D