//350 Spiders and Sound

Having seen the arduino and kinect I have to say that I'm a little more than intimidated by them.  Their codes and ways confuse me to no end.  So in the end I have decided to go with Icon.  With the pepakura program I hope to make 20+ spiders in pepakura and spread them out within a room.  When a person enters the room, which will be dimly lit, then Icon will start to play a sound that is both grinding and unpleasant to the ears.  What I want people to get out of my project is pure fear, I hope that it will actually make someone so uncomfortable that they leave the room in terror.  P.S. this spider is not mine, but one I found on the internet, I hope to construct my own spider bodies in blender before transferring it to pepakura.

--VMS

Art 343// Golf Hole (Updated)

For our next project we have to create a golf hole using the program Pepakura. What I'm planning to create is a golf hole with giant flowers and grass stalks.  However, I want people to feel relaxed, and not too small, so the flowers will not be towering over everyone.  I want the plants to feel more overgrown than giant actually.

--VMS

Art 343// Blender Sculptures

We had to create two sculptures in Blender, one created from our own imagination, and the second from copied free 3D models off of the internet.

Because I'm still learning on how to bring texture into Blender the first sculpture looks a bit crappy.  I tried to create a sort of flower pen with butterfly wings.  The pen is to resemble my love for art and drawing, while the flower says my appreciation about nature and the world.  The butterfly wings symbolize my love for bugs, and the small heart is just something that I always place within my signature.  Without the texture the sculpture looks a lot better, but it was my first time applying color in Blender and I don't think it came out as bad as it could have.  I tried to make all the parts have similar coloring so it would look as a single object, but I wonder now what would it have looked like if I did place the color as each item is individually.

The second sculpture I am much more proud of.  It was made in Blender 2.5 and it really shows the advanced capabilities of the new software.  It is just able to withstand far more graphical abuse than the first one, and is able to have immense detail.  However to learn it will be like learning Blender all over again.  Anyway, this is my Arch de Chair.  One day while walking along the riverside I saw a few teenagers skateboarding on the grounds of a theater building.  It annoyed me how a building that is used for the love of thespianism could have been so disrespected.  I then remembered how when people see buildings some just see it as a place to sit, no matter what it's history value is or it's architectural beauty.  I then began to think what if these beautiful works of art were then constructed from everyday chairs that we have come so accustom to sitting on?  Would they get what I mean or would they just find it amusing?  The human is there to show the size of the sculpture.  During the process nothing about the original chair model was altered and it was all built up from the same model.  I made sure to stack the chairs in a way that is almost believable, yet of course in real life some adhesive would most definitely be needed to be applied.  I really appreciate Blender and my computer for taking the graphical abuse I gave it because by the end of the project both began to run really slow.

--VMS

Art 350// Makerbot Bug

After tinkering with the MakerBot and it's programs, with a big help from Clint from his awesome job at actually making the machine work, we were finally able to print a MakerBot bug.  Unfortunately the Bot went a little mental when it came to the bug's legs, so I had to make that in plaster clay.  Unfortunately I've learned that the type of clay is damaging to an oven and therefore I am unable to bake it.  So it seems that any and all bugs that I make from here on out will have to be made in pieces using Blender, and then printed individually using Bot and just superglue them together.  I really like how the first one turned out though, so now I can start on my final, a bug room.  However, to do that, this semester I will have to start playing with the Arduino, should be fun.

--VMS

Praying Mantis

Goals:

Create a bug fully from one block in Blender. Finished

Decide on either one large bug or a bunch of smaller ones. A bunch

The bug that I created here was all from just one start block in blender. While I am proud of how it turned out, I was unable to fully complete the small details because it became too much for my computer to handle. Also, apparently it also has too many faces for it to even be colored in Blender, go figure. Nevertheless, I like how it turned out and hope to make more. In retrospect, it might of been easier if I started off with an easier bug, but I love praying mantises.

I based my mantis off of this photo.  Courtesy of Google search.

My mantis created in Blender, seen from the side.

It's back side.  The wings were among the hardest
objects to render using only a single block.

My mantis seen from underneath.

A bit of the details that I tried to render on its face.
I wasn't able to produce the jaws perfectly,
but I think that it's pretty close.

--VMS

Art 343// Digital Nation two Paragraphs

Digital_Nation Life on the Virtual Frontier is a documentary that looks further into the virtual worlds, and even tackles some possible problems with addiction. From the very start it shows how people, especially the younger generation, is attached to their electronics to the point where it is almost an obsession. Many claimed that they couldn’t live without their technology. South Kora in particular has recognized technology as a possible addiction and have even set up facilities to battle it. Where I stand, I agree that people are, in a way, addicted.
However I believe that the generation that I grew up with is probably the most fortunate of the technology boom. For example I grew up with technology and admittedly, as a child I did not like reading books. However now as an older gentleman I now miss the feel of books and have started to get into them even more than before. Everything should be taken into moderation, even what we feel like we need.

--VMS

(Trust me, if I could I would probably write a whole essay on this and it was hard to do just two paragraphs.)

Art 343// Second Life Machinima, End Me

A project that was created in a group, we decided to make a movie of a suicide victim from the documentary The Bridge.  Much of it was recreated in second life and then edited together with the original documentary.



--VMS