fox's ides1262 blog @fox5358582 - Tumblr Blog

Week 10 - mastery over the wheely chairs

I'm so glad that this class had such sick chairs to wheel around the room on when I needed to move from place to place. I feel like I'd finally been granted true freedom via a beautiful, four-legged plastic carriage of true comfort and ultimate mobility. I'll forever miss gracefully back-pedaling into the sides of the tables when I wasn't looking where I was going, and painfully smashing my kneecaps into the metal bars under the tables.

In all seriousness, I genuinely really enjoyed this class, and I felt like I was given a wonderful opportunity to experience the full design process. While I feel like it would been slightly more immersive if we took one single product through the whole process, I still feel I successfully grasped all the ideas and built myself a strong understanding of the different design stages with each exercise.

I was initially quite uneasy about the class, as my sketching ability was pretty nonexistent to begin with - however, this class has shown me that while having sketching ability is definitely a bonus, you can absolutely convey your ideas in other ways through rough and 3d models, brief and stylistic sketches that don't have to be perfectly accurate like my brain used to tell me.

This course has really helped me to especially develop my modelmaking skills, particularly in the stages between initial ideas and further refinement - Weeks 6 and 7 felt so productive, and blue foam modelling is probably my new favourite prototyping method. Previously I would have just jumped straight into Fusion and spent hours changing the smallest things, then waiting for renders, etc...

It surprised me at first, but one of my favourite exercises was actually the perspective drawings. I'd done them in the past in a chaotic and messy way, which had always driven me away from trying them again, but once we were shown how to draw in perspective to the correct measurements my mind was genuinely blown. As someone who loves to work with precise tools like CAD, seeing all these random lines joining from two points at a seemingly random position on my page to create such a precise geometric object was super satisfying, and I'm really glad that I now have the tools to do it myself.

Making these tumblr posts and seeing other people's progress through the term has also been an absolute treat, especially when you consider that this is the alternative to exams. I've just loved seeing how everyone comes up to solutions to all these exercises in their own unique ways, and then how everyone has presented them in their own unique style. It's super interesting, and I'd love to see this style of assessment again in the future.

Most importantly, I just want to say a huge thank-you to Gonz, Sarah, and Rob for running such an enjoyable course. This is easily the one I feel I've gotten the most from during this degree. I also want to say thanks to everyone else for leaving such insightful comments and posting such wonderful work for everyone to see.

See y'all next term.

Click to view the GIF

#ides1262 #week10 #unsw

Week 9 - twisting proudly

This week's task was definitely one of the simplest ones, in spite of all the tech troubles that seemed to be plaguing us during class. I had some experience with dealing with myAccess file accessibility from a past course, so I was able to figure out moving things between Citrix and the desktop which made things a bit more doable.

I never got my own bottle scanned in the MCIC as I found it a lot simpler to create it from the ground up in Fusion, which I could then easily bring over into 3DS Max. I ended up choosing not to edit my own bottle, and instead used the provided perfume bottle because I felt it would be better to learn the process of taking a scan and making it usable.

Following the steps, I:

Rotated and then corrected the bounding box;

Smoothed and made the bottle nice and symmetrical - I actually found the 'optimize' tool was significantly better than the 'smooth' tool in terms of removing bumps and dents.

I then tapered and twisted the bottle, giving a fairly unusual shape that I was happy with. I'd already done a fair bit of experimentation with modifiers from Week 8, so I didn't feel the need to go too crazy this time round. Plus, if I'm going to print the bottle I wouldn't mind it being recognizable as a perfume bottle.

Finally I exported the file as an STL and set up my Cura to be ready to print. I won't actually print the file, but it's good to see the process from start to finish. I feel like I'd confidently be able to scan almost any object to edit and adjust to rapidly prototype more effectively than I have previously.

#ides1262 #week9 #unsw

Week 8 - proud, then enraged, british ancestors

Pre-class:

The video is particularly helpful in explaining why models can be superior to sketches because they can allow a designer to physically feel how the object feels in the hand, how we interact with it in terms of it's texture, weight, and form - we cannot get this sense of an object's ergonomics without a physical model. The fidelity of the models refer to the level of detail, how close to the final product that part is in terms of its material makeup, weight, form and surface texture.

Post-class:

This week we were introduced to 3ds Max, which is pretty different from most of the other modelling software I've used in the past. This program is clearly more oriented towards more artistic and creative design work, whereas Fusion360 or Rhino are more heavily oriented toward engineering and architectural design respectively.

I initially found it incredibly unintuitive, and after using it for a good few hours, I found it even more unintuitive and somehow even more confusing than when I'd started. This program is incredibly intricate, and is clearly designed for someone who already knows how to use it, as the modelling tools available are unbelievably specific and tailored towards highly specialized forms that I'm not yet used to.

I first started with just learning the layout, as one does, and of course making the all-mighty green sphere.

The primitives were thankfully nice and easy to use, and I was very grateful to see the inclusion of the teapot as a base object, I could feel my British ancestors smiling upon me as I made a teapot in such high detail that it completely crashed my 3ds Max. Playing around with the modifiers a bit, I then realized I could bring shame upon my bloodline by melting the teapot to unrecognizability.

I tried also to create the infamous Blender donut via several methods, none of them particularly working out, but it definitely let me explore some of the strange options this program has.

I played around with a few more modifiers, eventually discovering the magic of the 'cloth' modifier. This was a tool I hadn't experienced in any of the previous programs I'd used, so I was immediately interested. I did a bit of research and found it could be used to make these beautiful draperies, for example this one by a reddit user:

161 votes and 10 comments so far on Reddit

Naturally I thought, "why not use this to tuck a frog in for a lovely night's sleep?"

This of course lead me down a rabbit hole of several hours of trying to let the blanket drape nicely and comfortably over our sweet amphibian in his fancy pink and purple bed, to absolutely no good result. I tried plenty of other methods, but I think this highly anticlimactic gif is a perfect summation of my experience with 3ds max so far.

I'm clearly not yet talented enough to model the frog, I found it and imported it from TurboSquid by the user herbertvanderwegen, source:

froggy.c4d 3D Model available on Turbo Squid, the world's leading provider of digital 3D models for visualization, films, television, and ga

Overall I feel like I have a lot left to learn of 3ds Max, should I feel it a better alternative to other programs in future. I did genuinely enjoy testing out some of the unique modifiers that I haven't seen in other programs, particularly the melt, cloth and the other 700 "crash program" buttons. I think this week has still been really valuable for me because I know more about what style of CAD/modelling program is best suited to me, and this was a great opportunity to go outside my comfort zone. Plus, it's not every day you get to fail to put a blankie on a frog.

#ides1262 #week8 #unsw

Week 7 - inhaling 14 metric tons of blue foam particles

This was definitely one of the most fun weeks, and most useful too. Creating our foam models from rough orthographic sketches was the task for both this class and IDES1212. It's really important that we learn how to transfer our ideas from paper to something we can physically touch, because we understand significantly more about what our designs might need to feel better in our hands, to be interacted with and used.

I was unfortunately a little too focused on my modelmaking during this task, and ended up not taking as many progress photos as I'd like. Seems to be a common trend.

In any case, I chose a few of the designs I had come up with from the thumbnail sketches and just went ham with the rasp on some approximately 100*60*80mm blue foam boxes. These were some of the initial results, all very rough:

I was immediately particularly fond of the bottom one here, I felt it was a unique and interesting shape. I decided to pursue it further, making alternate models and trying out different styles to see how it felt in my hand in different shapes.

I ended up disliking most of the changes I made to these, opting to more closely refine the first bottle I came up with.

Adding some putty to cover up some of my over-eagerness with the rasp and sandpaper, I ended up with a really nice and smooth form after a significant amount of sanding. I'm really, really pleased with how this turned out.

This week certainly felt like one of the most productive ones so far, I feel I've made quite significant progress on creating a form that feels good in the hand and is representative of 'pride' as is necessitated by the Studio class.

#ides1262 #week7 #unsw

Week 6 - they might be potions

This is the first week where I really, really struggled. I have almost no prior Photoshop experience, which didn't help at all, and I just kept running into issues that I spent hours trying to google solutions for but came up empty - it seems that in order to find solutions you need to know the terminology of all the tools really really well, and that's where I ran into most of my problems.

While the tutorials were well made and should have been easy to follow, I kept running into more issues of parity between Rob on Mac and myself on a Windows computer, alongside several other setup differences which honestly drove me mad. This led to me being really dissatisfied with the outcome of what I'd produced despite my best efforts.

My biggest roadblock was by far the clipping masks, as seen in the image below. I could not for the absolute life of me figure out how to work around these properly and to stop them from getting in the way. While it would absolutely have been possible to recreate the shapes in other ways, I felt at the time that it would be worth trying to figure it out. On reflection, that was just several hours down the drain for little result. These issues meant I couldn't properly add in the background, I had several issues with ensuring my shading stayed within my actual shape, and it even managed to mess with the drop shadows if I put them too close.

With my 'final product' there's clearly a lot of work that could be done, but to be honest I need to come back and look at this in like a week - I didn't anticipate running into such issues before deciding to begin so close to the due date. In terms of things I could have done better that were definitely within my control, my shading could definitely use some work - it's definitely there on closer inspection, however it does not add to the '3d-ness' of my perfume bottles.

#unsw #ides1262 #week 6

Week 5 - i promise they're not potions

This week's task was a creative change from previous weeks, and I found it useful to highlight the areas where my skills could use a lot of work. To begin with, the amount of time I spent placing the 65*32.5 boxes on an A2 page was absurd, but once I had them I begun sketching the perfume bottles quite quickly as ideas kept coming to mind. I chose pride for the emotion I designed off of, because lord knows I have no idea what 'motivated' means.

I started at the bottom right and worked my way up to the top left, presuming that as I ideated I would have more interesting ideas that I would want to bring attention to first, as opposed to the more basic shapes I had started with.

I ended up creating a good range of shapes which I was halfway pleased with, particularly disliking the top row once I felt I had finished my sketches. I think it's important to also know what you don't like in a design, so I left them as examples of how perhaps too much detail - for example the top right - can detract, and that having more abstract shapes - top left - can make for just ugly shapes. My favourites were the two in the middle row on the right hand side, as well as the more basic tapered prism in the bottom left. I thought these were the most interesting and had the most potential to be expanded upon, so I chose to redraw these in perspective.

I was really quite pleased with how these came out in perspective, especially considering how few straight lines the far left drawing had. I really struggled to get good curves and to accentuate the shape of the bottom of the bottle, but I'm still proud of my progress in perspective drawing. My personal favourite is by far the middle, although I feel like it's not terribly unique in terms of it's design it still conveys pride quite well.

I really struggled adding shading to the drawings, as that's a skill I've always lacked and am still developing, albeit slowly. I don't think it's too bad, and it does help accentuate the shape of the middle one quite well, but I feel it detracts from the far left significantly enough that I think it looked better without.

Overall I'm pleased with the outcome of this week's task, and I feel it has helped me identify some of my weaknesses in sketching so I now have a clear path of something to work on. I'm excited to see how these will come out with a digital makeover next week.

#unsw #ides1262 #week 5

Week 4 - "Draw a few circles, it'll be easy" they said.

I found this week's activities took me significantly longer than the previous weeks' tasks, perhaps because there was a similar initial process between the three tasks. I definitely found that my process sped up and became more accurate as I did them, and I found it became quite intuitive quite quickly.

The first chamfered box was the biggest struggle, as this was the first time trying 2 point perspective from such a rigid method.

It came out quite nicely, I'd say, only a few lines looked a bit wonky in the sketch process which I'd call a win.

Again I feel my photography could use some work, particularly in the photo above - Using certain filters doesn't really seem to help, nor does changing the lighting massively impact the outcome so I keep feeling displeased with how my work is being shown here.

The second task was really interesting to work out how planes extend in perspective, and I found it an intuitive continuation of the last task. This was the more enjoyable part of this week's task, and I can completely understand how I can make use of similar techniques with my own drawing in future.

The third part drove me insane, frankly.

Drawing circles with what is effectively early onset Parkinson's is like trying to cut through a brick wall using a spoon. I 'got there' eventually, but I'm not terribly pleased with the outcome...

I tried using different circle templates of different radii, as seen in the top left of the front face below, but for a few I wanted to try by hand which was a serious struggle.

I also found the use of the major and minor axis weren't terribly helpful in drawing the circles, perhaps I misunderstood their use.

Overall I felt like I learned quite a lot this week - 2 point perspective is quite tough, especially when you're drawing with an object with defined measurements that have to be accounted for. I'm really enjoying the increasing level of difficulty in the tasks.

#unsw #ides1262 #week 4

Week 3 - 4:07 sun

This week's tasks were quite similar to last week's, only introducing the ideas of section and auxiliary views. I found the given task to not be too difficult, as I managed to get a bit lucky and spot the unusual shape quite early on.

I planned out my drawing quite quickly, which led to me not having quite enough room to fit the auxiliary drawing in in the same way others did. I found this actually gave me the opportunity to try a removed and rotated view, which was at least a bit different.

I feel my final drawing shows all the measurements exactly as required while not giving any duplicate information, which I'm quite proud of.

For next time, I should try to keep my workplace a bit cleaner, as there are a few small visible splots of ink in parts of the page from when I dropped a pen.

Edit, fixed with Will's suggestions:

#ides1262 #unsw #week 3

Week 2 - ඞ

Engineering drawings were the focus of this week's tasks, I found they were equally enjoyable as the last. Having learned from my mistakes last week of lacking certain geometry tools, I found a lot greater success in making accurate projections across my page with them now on hand.

I chose to use a wooden puzzle as my object to draw, and created the box for it during classtime:

While creating the net for my cube, I realised that I'd chosen an object that was very similar on all sides, and was easily drawn due to being comprised of a voxel-like grid of 6x6 wooden blocks per piece.

The net worked out very nicely, and I could clearly see what I needed to draw within my engineering drawing using this. I also felt the need to change my object up a bit so I'd actually be drawing something different each time, so I removed two of the pieces to create a more interesting form which I then begun to draw.

I decided on a 2:1 scale for my object as otherwise it would be far too small to be appropriate on an A3 size page, and it fit perfectly within my external border. I also elected not to show a left side view, as it would be the same as the right side but inverted - not showing any new information, as the object was symmetrical across that plane.

Retracing with a ruler and pen, and adding measurements. All the measurements were 8.25 mm, as the object could be easily analysed in a 6 by 6 pixel-like grid from side views.

Accounting for feedback from last week, I have also scanned my images to get a clearer view of my whole image and improve the quality. I'm not terribly pleased with how it has come out though, as a lot of the useful pencil markings that show how parts of the object line up show up, and also I feel my handwriting of the TOP, FRONT and RIGHT text could have been improved.

Overall I feel like I understand engineering drawings better due to this exercise, and I'm pleased with my final result. I feel it looks significantly better in person, so if anybody has tips to better capture all the elements with just a phone camera I would appreciate some advice.

#ides1262 #unsw #week2

Week 1 - be there or t square

This first week has been fun, it's definitely a change from last term's class.

Part 1:

This first exercise was actually really fun, I love being given challenges like these. Replicating geometry is really interesting when your toolset is limited to four different angles and a compass.

I found the inner curved walls of the valve-shape to be the toughest, because I originally got the radius wrong, and then struggled to place my curves in the right spot. I also had some trouble holding my ruler straight on the star shape too, as evident.

I'm fairly pleased with how these turned out, I wish I'd taken more photos and a bit more care drawing the inner curves on the valves. I'm not sure how to best approach these.

Part 2:

My initial approach to this was to draw the shape with as few lines as possible to make it simple, using 60° angles as are required in equilateral triangles.

I took the completed shape and decided that the best way to replicate it three more times was to cut all four shapes out at the same time, using two sheets of folded paper. I used white and orange that I had on hand to get some nice contrast.

Stuck together and then cut out, my shapes came out perfectly with only one round of cutting required. Unfortunately I ended up bending the thin paper a little, so it kind of bends at the corners of the orange ones. Nothing a little double sided tape can't fix.

They tessellated really nicely in the end! I was pleased with my result, so I decided to immediately fold each piece and ruin the tessellating shape for a bit of fun...

You might be able to see where this is going...

Can't just pass up on that kind of opportunity, can I?

Overall pleased with my work this week - my camera work could definitely use some improvement, and more progress photos would be nice too.

#unsw #ides1262 #week1

G'day :)

Hi. I'm Fox, I can't sit still and I don't actually like beans all that much. I think they're quite overrated.

For my first blog post, I think it's important to share all the creative things you can do with beans that aren't eating them. This gallery is often where I look when I'm feeling down, and it cheers me right back up to see the level of innovation and creativity on display.

May 3, 2018 - Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered entertainment destination. Lift your spirits with funny jokes

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