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April 23, 2007
lsgl: geometry jam
by sven at 11:59 pm
It's always important to think about process. Get meta!
Today's brainstorm: Since I've been getting stuck in a rut with the beacon designs, give myself a time-limit to work against. Quick sketches -- 15 minutes each, then move on.
Of course, I bend my own rules... But the spirit of the challenge worked -- I've got some new directions. Quick and dirty, but that's the nature of sketches.
Part of what wasn't working with the brain beacon designs was the inter-splicing of organics and machinery. I dropped the radar array at the top completely for this one. In terms of brain beacon designs, this is the right direction to go in... But really, I think I've got to go back to my original vision, which was just a plain machine.
Instead of the "oriental vase" shape, what if I went more with a globe shape? This one reminds me a bit of the spaceship from First Men In The Moon (classic Harryhausen). Sort of a Jules Verne-ish steampunk direction.
(Incidentally, process-wise, it occurred to me that I've been working without reference materials... Cuz there are none! So, this afternoon I dragged out a pile of books about sci fi movies -- just to have something for inspiration.)
This one has a sort of egg shape for the torso. I realized that you can apply a radial fall-off to the stretch tool in Modeler (part of LightWave).
I'm really intrigued by that big circular view screen. It feels very classic 1950's sci fi... A feeling that I'm sorta going for here. I did some experiments trying to figure out how I'm going to put images on the screen. I think using an image map that's actually a QuickTime movie will be the most painless option.
Ah! This one's simple, but I think it communicates "communication device" better than anything else I've done so far. Sorta reminds me of the moisture vaporators on Tatooine.
I took the stilt-waker model and distorted it with the stretch tool. It begins to approximate the vase shape that I'd been using so much. Hm. ...I do like having the "stilts" bent, though.
I took the model and squashed it even more. Now it's beginning to look like a cross between a bathysphere and V'ger from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I really like what's happened to the ribbing! That's a texture I could see using on the final design!
Oh, FYI: for the "geometry jam", I did a whole bunch of stuff that you're not seeing, as well. (As has been the case every time I've posted about work on the beacon.) These were the designs that I was enough intrigued by that I bothered to texture them and render them out in LayOut (the other half of LightWave).
posted by sven | April 23, 2007 11:59 PM | categories: let sleeping gods lie