Well, it's been quite a while since the last one, but here we are. I want to sort of start by explaining why, and its entirely because of time. This particular project I am writing about now was completed quite some time ago. In fact, the projects for the next two blogs are also complete. The entire first semester is complete. I will hopefully do a recap on the whole semester after the next two, but I need to get caught up first. As far as why I didn't write this earlier? These take a little while to compile and edit the images and write it out, and I simply didn't have time to do that while dealing with everything else, and when I did get some free time, I chose to instead create a entry to the Undiscovered Civilizations contest, and my entry, Regenesis actually ended up winning the contest. I'm glad I went that direction there. Anyways, its winter break, which means I can pump these out to get caught up. Unfortunately, due to varying reasons I don't have as many pictures as I normally do, but I'll try to still make it interesting.

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Project #3 - Plane

  So, last time we did a project centered around line, which is a one dimensional space. We live in a three dimensional space, and we are working up to there, but there's a step in between right? Well, for those of you who don't know whats in between 1 and 3, its 2. What is a 2 dimensional space? Its a plane. Think like the things you were working with in basic algebra courses, not that vehicle type that some users here build WAY too many of (Yes, I am aware I have built 45 skyscrapers. Shut up.)

  We started by actually making a drawing that was inherently based off of our line cube where we took a drawing we had made of that and traced over it to form planes. We would do things such as extend some planes, intersect some planes, and other fancy things like that. Unfortunately I can't really find pictures of the steps I took to get to this final product, but they all looked pretty much the same, just not as clean.



  I want to mention a few things about this. First off, it was done using Gouache, which is a word with at least 3 too many letters. This is a type of paint that essentially works as really thick, fancy watercolors. You take the paint, mix it with a tiny bit of water, and it comes down as a relatively smooth, solid color. Its great if you didn't have to tape every single edge... it takes forever to do anything with it. At least it looks nice.

  Regarding the design, to most people it looks like a worthless piece of modern art... and I completely agree. There's not much here that makes sense, but I kind of like the look of it. Of course, its Architecture school, so I have to explain the living daylight out of everything. Here I did on purpose do this thing where the planes in the picture almost break, leaving a random gap in it. I also purposefully intersected planes in such a way that you are able to tell which direction every plane is on. There's no optical illusions going on here. And finally, the focal point of the painting appears to be slightly to the right side of it, which I said was on purpose. So there's the guouachueaoue painting... what did I do next?

  Well, the first thing we did in three dimensions was construct three mini cubes out of chipboard (which is essentially fancy cardboard without the squishy bit... so thick brown or grey paper). You will see in the next blog that this stuff is actually the bane of my existence, and led to what would be my first ever professional injury. For now though, things went swimmingly. While we were forced to do three, I figured I would be an absolute idiot and do four just for the hell of it. In reality, they didnt take me that long to build and I had extra material and time.



  You will notice that these are very, very, VERY sloppy. Half of the planes aren't even straight. Turns out no one really cares at that stage and I just carried on. There were a few rules that we had to follow when designing these. First off, there needed to be four planes on the exterior, and four planes on the interior. That makes 8 total to make this cubic form. The second thing was that we were not allowed to make any of the planes larger than half of one side of the cube, so in the case of these 6 inch cubes, no larger than 3"x 6".
  Overall, my designs looked exactly like everyone else's, but that's entirely the product of the restrictions we had. Our goal was not to necessarily make something never before seen, but rather make something that allows us to understand how planes interact with each other and how they can be composed in a three dimensional form.

  Next up? Revisions. I chose my favorite one and butchered it like a pig being made into a Christmas ham (got to be festive, its December :D)



It looks like Frankenstein's monster had a rather rough day... that got painted by Picasso or something. I rather liked the contrast between the dirty grey board stuff and the hastily applied painters tape. It really evokes the duality of man...

  I'm kidding. This stage is a mess, but its really close to the part where it looks good. All that was left was to go buy some museum board to actually build the final model. I went to my nearest art store and bought myself a nice big sheet, and it only costed twenty two dollars. So yeah, one mini heart attack at the cost of one sheet of fancy paper later... I was set. I began cutting this stuff at a scale of 1.5:1 in regards to that mess of a model above, and finally something nice came out of it:



  Overall, this isn't nearly as complicated as the line cube before it, and it didn't take nearly as long, but this has the unique characteristic of being made of planes, not lines. Its also white, which is nice. The plane in the front there I specifically wanted to have it elevated off the ground for two reasons. One, I needed a fourth interior plane and I already had four exterior planes, and two, I really likes that look of it floating. It reminisces back to the cantilever elements of the line cube.

  After this, it was then up to me to create a hand drawing of the cube in the same style as the line cube's final drawing. This is what it looks like:



  And with that final drawing done, all parts of this assignment were complete. Overall this was a rather easy construction, especially compared with the line cube. It was pretty much just cutting and gluing paper together, just that everything got more expensive as we went on. I ended up with something that looked quite nice, and would probably look pretty cool as a building if one of the axis were stretched.
  
  Anyways, as with the line cube, here are some final professional quality pictures for you guys to look at, courtesy of the same session as the line cube pictures, which happened to be the first time I ever used a professional camera.


  Anyways, I hope you enjoy this one. The next entry to this blog should hopefully not be too far off. The project is done, and pictures are taken. I just need to edit those and find time to create this post. Hope you all are still enjoying this though, despite the break. I'll see you all next time.

  -Ryer