Research and Inspiration
I finished most of my research for this week’s tasks in previous weeks so I just focused on finding inspiration for what is possible in Blender in general. Through this project, as I’ve said before, I’m more and more intrigued by the capability of Blender and have the desire to learn more. That being said I just decided to see what other artists are doing in Blender as inspiration for both this project and future projects involving this amazing program.
I know that Blender runs deep but I intend to gain the skills inspired by these videos to incorporate into my artistic practice. Aside from video animation some of the abstract renders that some artists are producing are incredible.
Pretty much anything by Gleb Alexandrov
City Adventure by befio studio
Various works by Matthew McGoogan
Process and Progress
This week I was able to complete my final 3D print for the physical component of this project. The majority of time spent was focused on getting my topographical model and my audio model to boolean together properly. Eventually I was able to get it to work well but it took some fiddling with the modifiers to get it right, specifically the Sudivsion Surface modifier. I also found that doing the boolean before I applied my displacement map seemed to make things go a little smoother.
After my print was completed on Wednesday my focus turned to animating the Trump model in Blender for the animation component of this project. I started by reviewing the several videos tutorials I have saved for armature animation and baking sound to f-curves. This ended up taking me a lot longer than I thought to get the drivers and action constraints working properly but in the end I have it set up correctly and now I just have to work on fine tuning the animation of the model, animating the camera and rendering out the final render.
Reflection
The thing I’m most happy with this week is my time management. Since the end of the quarter is almost here I have projects in all of my classes all due around the same time. Unlike my last quarter, I feel comfortable with the time I set aside for each project and the progress that I have completed in each so far. This has allowed me to calmly approach the remaining tasks for all of my projects which I find has been helpful for the quality of my productivity.
I’m excited at how my 3D printing skills and knowledge have increased from just this project. I have a better understanding of material characteristics and am finally beginning to grasp the odd time to print size scale. I also believe that my modeling skills have increased slightly because I’ve been able to complete bigger prints in a more efficient manner.
As I stand a little further back, I’m beginning to understand more and more of the techniques available in the emergent digital field. Now that I’ve gained more skills and knowledge of these techniques I feel that I can begin to turn my attention to the conceptual/contextual side of my practice and really start to make these works have more meaning and generate more productive conversation. However, this is still an area of my practice where I know I need guidance and mentorship as I move forward.