Clay Purdy Week 12: Pepakura Creature

Concept: For my creature I combined a snow leopard and a horned owl to create an Owl Griffin. I like the beefy sturdy legs and thick tail that snow leopards have and wanted to incorporate that into my design. I also took inspiration from this old ceramic black panther sculpture my grandmother has in her house, I've always liked the fluidity of the piece and wanted to try and imitate it.

Techniques: I sculpted the model in Mudbox. I made the head, body, legs and tail separately, each starting out as spheres. I mirrored the front legs, then slightly altered one using the freeze tool to mask off areas on the part then the grab tool to change its pose, I did the same thing for the back legs. In Rhino, I boolean union-ed all the parts together then used the reduce mesh tool in Maya to fine tone the low poly look.

Materials: In Keyshot, I used a rough textured metal material. I used the curvature texture on top of that to add the highlights on the high points or "positive curves" of the model. I wanted to piece to looked like a buffed back, patinated bronze. I think the piece has a very brutalistic style to it, so I set it in an open, grey industrial wear house.

For our actual piece, my group chose Hunter's Duckaroo. We found that the piece had a clean design and came off as very displayable with its three points of contact base. We also found the piece to be really funny looking and thought it would be cool to see it on a large scale.

Hunter modeled the piece and both Zach and Hunter worked on getting ready for and running through the laser cutter. We all came together to assemble the separate larger pieces using loctite. I took those larger pieces home and worked on the larger assembly, post processing and surface application. 

During the building process, we filled the tail, feet and legs with expanding insulation foam to give the piece more stability. To finish the piece, I coated the entire thing in masking tape, starting with the edges then filling in the wholes. I did this to seal the cardboard and also create texture with the folds and wrinkles in the tape. Once the pieces were sealed, I coated them in a black spray on primer to prep the surface to be painted with acrylic paint and to seal it even further. After that, I applied a dark green base layer of paint and started to assemble the lager pieces into one. A challenge arose at this point with the larger pieces not quite fitting together perfectly. All the different little flaps being glued together just slightly off allowed for enough variance in shape on the larger scale creating gaps between pieces. I managed to cover the gaps using tape though. I used multiple layers of paint, varying in tint and hue, to give the surface more depth. To finish it off, I used metalic gold paint and a dry brush technique to hit the high points of the surfaces to give it a buffed, patinated bronze look.

 

Clay Purdy: Week 7 Waffle Construction

 

Concept: I wanted to make something with a practical use. I took inspiration from old, ornate iron structures, specifically an antique school desk I have in my house. My original idea was to make a stand for my laptop, but decided to go with something requiring less specific measurements. So instead, I turned one of my sketches into a wall sconce with a big lightbulb.   

Techniques: I started building my model by revolving a curve to make the part that holds the bulb. I built the different parts of the model separately by drawing their shapes with curves on a plane then extruding them, creating square objects. To give the pieces their narrow shapes, I brought in a box, angled it then mirrored it, then used boolean difference to cut away the corners. To make the separate sections one piece I used boolean union. To create the waffle structure I followed Professor Scott's Waffles With Pipes tutorials on Youtube.  

Materials: I used a rough black plastic material for the model to resemble cast iron. I applied a warm light texture to a cylinder then placed it into a lightbulb I modeled in Rhino. I applied a clear glass texture to the bulb and changed the color to amber. I wanted it to look like it was in an old mansion so, for the environment I made a wall with a molding frame in Rhino then applied a dark wood planks texture. To create an old mansion atmosphere. I brought the environmental lighting down a lot, but not so much that you couldn't see the model anymore. 

For the physical model, I was planning on covering it with a coat of textured spray paint, then applying a coat of black metallic paint on top of that.