Upright Piano [cutaway]

The piano is done!!! Screw you gradients, bane of my existence.

Best: Watching the parts fall into place and seeing some dimension appear as the texture and gradients were added. Also, I have to say, I am really loving those red arrows in the bottom right diagram.

Worst: Adding the texture and gradients.

Namib Beetle

Hello Mr. Namib Beetle: My first experiment on Sculptris [parts imported and assembled in C4D]. If you haven't heard of him, the Namib desert beetle has been the inspiration for many water harvesting biomimicry innovations. He sticks his bumpy bum into the air and the special hydrophilic bumps on his back causes water condensation. The droplets run down his back and into his mouth. Thus, he drinks by mooning the world. Classy.

He won't be sitting in the pristine, clean, lab environment for long haha.
Thank goodness.

Subway Safety again

Okay I upgraded the suicide poster from last year. After further research, I thought it would be more informative to provide information that would discourage people from contemplating suicide.
One thing I found really interesting is that in parts of Asia, not all the stations have suicide prevention glass but studies showed that suicide rates still decreased after some stations got the barrier glass because it "delethalized" the subway system. Something else that was pretty harrowing was reading interviews with drivers who experienced hitting a jumper and how traumatic that was for them. It seems like people underestimate their own ability to affect others sometimes.
The most annoying thing about this project was probably having to explain to people why I had notes under the heading, "suicide" in my sketchbook.

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I just ordered a pack of classic cards and some round stickers.
I'll do an update when I get them. Woohoo!

Piano [work in progress]

B

A

Hey guys,
Winter term has been nuts but I just thought I'd give this update. I'm working on a cutaway view of a piano and lemme just say, I'm in gradient hell. Image A is with a second layer of gradients to bring out the structure of the key mechanism. Image B is with only one layer of gradients that demonstrate texture.
The second layer really makes a significant difference in terms of clarifying depth and structure.
Woohoo. Hopefully I'll finish this before I pass out. 

No promises.

Piscivore [old+new]

A reworking of an old project. You can compare the two just to see the different approaches I took. In the old version, I was basing a lot of the shapes on the swooping motions that each of the birds used in fishing. I also chose to show the full body of the birds in their water environments but stylized the water [which was an experimental approach] to draw together the organic birds with the geometric backdrop.
In the new version, I opted for a closeup view of each bird because I felt that a more detailed view of the actual fishing mechanism of each bird was more important than seeing their full body. Additionally, I went for a lighter palette so that the background did not overshadow the main content. Finally I cleaned up the sequential diagrams, turning them into vectors just for clarity's sake. There's a time to use pixels and then there's a time for clean, crisp, vectors. I actually learned a lot from making myself go through this exercise. I'm very pleased with the new version.

New

Old

Intrinsic Elements of the Hand

Some media explorations paired with hand sketches. This was exploratory on almost all fronts. I haven't tried anything like this before, aside from the first pencil sketches, so it was very fun. Backgrounds were made with tea, coffee, chalk pastel, and watercolour.

Best: Fiddling with textures digitally and physically.
Worst: Carpals. After pisiform I've got no landmarks.

+ one of our profs just shared this article. Here's a small exerpt:

"In this country, there are almost twice as many neurosurgeons as there are professional illustrators. There are eleven times as many certified mechanics. There are SEVENTY times as many people in the IT field.

So, given that they are less rare, and therefore less in demand, would it make sense to ask your mechanic to work on your car for free? Would you look him in the eye, with a straight face, and tell him that his compensation would be the ability to have his work shown to others as you drive down the street?

Would you offer a neurosurgeon the “opportunity” to add your name to his resume as payment for removing that pesky tumor? (Maybe you could offer him “a few bucks” for “materials”. What a deal!)

Would you be able to seriously even CONSIDER offering your web hosting service the chance to have people see their work, by viewing your website, as their payment for hosting you?" (retrieved from: http://positionrelative.wordpress.com/)