For my 3D natural form, I used the shell that I picked during class.
I created sketches to see how each part of the shell is sectioned out and looked at the axis of the shell itself. My sketches cover the basic form of the shell and does not go into detail about each line textures or spikes on the surface. I wanted to keep my sketches simple so that it can be easily referred to and transferred onto when I create the 3d form.
In my first attempt, I created the overall form of the shape by molding a huge chunk of clay similarly to the shape of the shell. By starting off this way, I realized that my clay became much larger than the actual shell form. This lead me to use a subtractive method to an additive material which distorted the ridges of the top spindles. The indents of the top cone shape morphed into a concave form rather than a straight angle. I believe using my fingers had the negative effects on the shape of the cone.
During our in class critique, I learned that there were certain sections of the shell that were not in the right axis. The top point of my shell drooped down, compared to the actual cone and the thickest part of the shell did not seem “hollow”. I needed to create a rounder shape and make the center part of the shell be more volumetric and bulbous.
For my second attempt, I worked small and started to build on top of the clay so that it is accurate to the dimensions of the shell. I decided to continue adding the top spindles rather than carving it out, which help make my clay form into a stack of the spiral shapes. I worked with the axis more, so that they were both oriented the same, but still struggled with the droopiness of the clay form at the tip of the shell. I believe that had to do a bit with gravity, and figured I need to push up against that weight to further develop the clay mold more accurately.
Moving on to my mouse form, I decided to use my foam material. It was a completely different approach because of its subtractive method. I cut out a chunk of the pink foam and started carving away at the sides to match the overall shape of my mouse. Working with the foam was quite a mess, and took a while to get used to. Some parts of my cut would be clean, while other parts would get shredded apart. It depended on the angle of my cut as well as the placement of my knife. There were still many rough and jagged edges on my final 1st iteration of the foam model.
For my first draft of the foam model, I noticed that the size of my model was bigger than the actual mouse. I was so concerned with creating the wrong cut that I worked conservatively with every slice. This lead to a bulky result and some part were left feeling unfinished. It was hard to get the inside groove of the front point of the mouse since my knife was unable to fit inside. This create a jagged and rough point, which I would want to further develop in my second iteration.
During my critique, it was mentioned that my mouse was a lot wider than the actual mouse and seemed more balloon-like than streamlined. I noticed this on the top view of the mouse and also saw that there wasn’t a significant slant with the top part of my foam mouse. The area where the thumb rests on the mouse was also not smoothened out or exaggerated. There needed to be a more concave shape to that slope. The bottom parts of my mouse also needed more work.
The clay version of the mouse was a lot easier to work with than my foam counterpart. Since the mouse was made for the human palm to rest over it, I used the same, gentle placement of my hand on my clay model. I wanted to replicate the same position my palm rested as for my sculpture. It was fun to work with this material because of the ease of creating sharp edges and clean slopes. However, I still found it difficult to work at the tip of the mouse where there is an indent in between the left and right click buttons. The tools I used was a flat edge of a brush, but it did not create the angular square shape like the real mouse, but a curved interior shape.
After my initial critique for my foam model, I decided to work on the form more and really try to replicate every angle of my mouse. I believe this was an improvement from my first iteration because of the smoothened edges and clear cuts of the bottom and front points of the mouse. I also indicated the buttons on the side of the mouse by cutting out a thin stroke of foam.
The adjectives I came up with for the mouse and shell are the following:
mouse
asymmetric
robotic
aerodynamic
clean
sharp
shell
pointed
tapered
bulbous
twisted
layered
For my hybrid form, I chose the adjectives aerodynamic, pointed, and layered. I decided to use foam for my final models because I started to enjoy working with the material more than I had anticipated. It was difficult to map out how the form would come out of the foam material. Carving out this form and using the subtractive method had its unique challenges, but the process of slowly cutting away the unnecessary parts were meditative and therapeutic. I thought I would get frustrated with the material from all the debris it creates and the permanent nature it has in every single cut; however, slicing away the from and creating a clean cut was incredibly satisfying and calming.
For the 1st iteration of my hybrid form, I approached it by creating a middle ground between the two forms. I looked at the main parts of my mouse and decided on the hierarchy of the different shapes. The mouse body had a slight downward slant for its dominant form, and a concave slope for the secondary form, and a sharp point for its subdominant form. Taking these parts into consideration, I chipped away at the foam for the main dominant form and created an oval-like shape with a left leaning slope. I took the main parts of the shell, such as its cone shape and very pointed tip. I also took its “layered” characteristic and combined it to my mouse shape. The results of the two combined forms created a strange spiral-like mouse.
During my critique session, Daphne discussed that my hybrid seemed to be a mesh between the two forms, but not an exploratory process of understanding the characteristics of each form to create a completely new structure. The exercise of pulling out the main characteristics of each form was to help us create a brand, new form based on those terms. I learned that I took the wrong approach for my hybrid, and went back to looking at my three adjectives. I picked out the word “aerodynamic” from my mouse because of its sloped nature and similar qualities of a sports car. It had lean edges on the front and buttons sticking out on the side for a sharp look. The word “layered” came from my shell since it had layered cones on the top of its shell. Both of these forms had the similar quality of a singular point, in which the points diverges to the middle of the form.
For my second and final iteration of my hybrid form, I focused on the three adjectives and derived a shape that I believe emits the qualities of “aerodynamic”, “layered”, and “pointed”. The forms all converge to the center of the form and create different levels of sharp and rounded edges. The concave cuts were made to emulate an aerodynamic look to the hybrid. In class, Q mentioned that there seemed to be a battle for attention between the “concaveness” of my form and the “aerodynamic” quality I was creating. The hierarchical conflict between these two characteristics may distract away from the main adjectives I used to derive this hybrid form. Overall, I believe this project was helpful in its way of teaching the subtle and thoughtful strokes a designer creates when creating a unique form.
