So I’ve been out of it for a while, but a couple weeks back, me and Shirley had a quick videoshoot for the Channel Trailer for my relatively brand new YouTube page.

colorless/FORM
@ youtube.com/colorlessform

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then videos are like…better…so I’ll be doing more of those. This will be the home of all my video documentations, as well as thoughts and hopefully some experimentations in film!

Go subscribe and I’ll tag you back.

It’s funner than 3D modeling all day.
Architecture. Yawn.

It was a long time coming, but after the midterm Building Project competition, the final month of design development on the 8 selected designs was a avalanche of work. This project was a month long assignment to develop a prototype housing design for the notoriously (and unused) skinny sliver lots across New Haven. Portfolio submissions forced me to photograph and photoshop my project, so here is my prototype proposal: the Rift.

I ripped the building in half.

As you can see (somewhat) from the nicely pinkish concept model (above), my focus was to create space and interconnections between spaces with non-orthogonal vectors – views, movement, voids. Space and depth is exaggerated in a particularly skinny lot (34ft) through skewing and rotating to gain area.

The final prototype – which is, by no means, a finished design – suggests a large volume housing separate smaller volumes (private bedrooms) above an open floor plan (living spaces), creating opportunities for one to catch glimpses of life above, or views down into spaces below.

This prototype would potentially allow for any number of volumes above, extending or shrinking to accommodate for a variation of sites.

Maybe not the simplest building to detail and construct, but it was a novel exploration into novel housing forms.

I’ve been getting into videography lately, as you can tell by my very limited YouTube channel as of yet, and the recent spike in amateurish video posts on this blog. I like piecing together those clips on Premiere and splicing together soundtracks.

Anyways, in my “research” (aka google), I came across follow focus – tools used by the professionals to track the focus along different planes. I don’t have any need for it yet, but I thought they looked pretty awesome, so like any normal person, I sketched up some designs, did a little math, CADed it up and got some parts laser cut in acrylic. With a sprinkling of Arduino magic (and a touch of Grasshopper Firefly to skip past the coding) and tossing in a spare servo (never thought I’d have those), a pretty basic device is born.

Ironic, though, that I didn’t get a chance to actually practice taking videos, as my camera was the model. iPhone on a stick (yay pistol grips!) did most of the work.

FOCUSSSSSSS.
(yes, it’s servo loud)

Final studio projects wrapped up, so I had a chance to lie around in the park with an empty page, a set of watercolors, and no particular goal (that was the hardest part). With the camera rolling, I let my brain do its thing for sixty minutes (had to move indoors because it got cold, though).

The result? An architecture-esque rendering: gravity-free forms bound with ethereal wisps. When critics ponder how student projects are held up during a critique, the usual answer – accompanying nervous head scratching – is any combination of wishes, dreams, or magic.

This is that.

Colorful and carefree.

This was a test for surface manipulation patterns for the upcoming blobble pavilion. This is one of three prototypes, whereby this spiked iteration would be designed to house an audio transducer and visually reference a blast of audio data.

The video highlights the design process, which began as a series of sketches and, through an exploration in Zbrush and robot CNC milling with the Kuka robot, a quick prototype was produced for the client meeting which was well received!

Fun times learning new software and getting my hands back on the Kuka robot!