A03 - Inspiration from Nature

Description: Project A03, which I titled "modular screen system," was introduced as a short one/two week project to put our paneling tools skills to work. We were instructed to take one side of a rectangular prism and distort the flat panel into a curvilinear wave-like form and then construct grid panels along the surface. The grid panels were then offset on the outside to provide a base grid for a custom 3D paneling system and on the inside to provide support for a framework of partitions. Finally, we were to selectively remove panels from the surface to form interesting shapes and shadows displayed through a V-ray rendered viewpoint from inside the box. 

From the beginning, I knew I wanted to create something whimsical rather than the sharp and angular surfaces we had made with the pre-made custom grids in Rhino. I decided on round shapes, either spheres or rings, and looked to nature for inspiration - initial ideas included dandelion fluff and cherry blossom flower petals. I eventually settled on the idea of bubbles created by gentle waves in calm water, like when you push your hand through water and the rippling that follows is accompanied by flourishing bubbles beneath the surface. The gentle curve of the modified plane also added to the concept, and I finished up the surface look by removing individual rings in the paneling system rather than whole groups that were used to make the screen. The final effect was of randomly grouped patches of bubbles that imitated what it might look like from underwater with the dappled light in the shadows. I declined to include the partition since I wanted the impression to be of free-flowing space in between the interior and exterior while the bubble-like rings provided a whimsical threshold. 

Thoughts: Extremely pleased with this one! Once again probably spent more time on it than I should have by procrastinating on studio work, but I definitely think it was worth it. I'll probably change the alignment of captions, contour of the waveform, and maybe do a closeup of the partition screen, but I'm pretty happy with it otherwise. I learned a lot about how to use Illustrator with the background of this board but would still like to know how to do things more quickly; perhaps it might get better with more practice?

I encountered some problems, mostly with the rendering of the rings since I had a very specific image that I wanted to be able to create in the rendered perspective. As I said in class, I had the idea of the screen being physically constructed from some hard transparent or translucent clear plastic material, like bubble wrap but less flimsy without losing it's "bubbly" texture. However, I couldn't figure out how to get the right material with the right reflectiveness/transparency for that effect, even after I messed around with the settings in the Environment and visMatEd tabs in V-ray. I also tried using more iridescent or lightly colored materials, but I think the actual reflective and transparent quality of the effect I'm looking for has to be obtained from messing with the lighting settings on the renderer. I think maybe that comes with more knowledge of what each setting does, but also with actively seeking out assistance/tutorials. Some day when I have more time.