saravipond – Page 2 – Dales Art Gallery

Unit 2 Proposal

Vulcan Planum

The idea for going into unit 2 is to expand into the medium of unity/blender, years ago I was able to understand and use the Skyrim creation kit to make a simple basement with warp points as it was a separate instance (meaning it is separate from the main map). There are a few ideas I have planned for this unit, I prepared a few ideas because: 1 I had quite a few muses over Christmas break, and 2 I found that having ideas I can fall back on if the concept I am working on doesn’t pan out well. The first idea is the simplest of them: Mind Root, the synaptic willow tree idea I had thought of back in December of last year, the entire concept was spawned by a random passing daydream where I imagined a spiralling willow tree made out of aluminum wire.

The next idea is more daunting, while listening to music I had another random daydream muse. I imagined I was running through a European-style city, I vigorously ran up some stairs leading to a fountain of hands and behind it was a large gothic-style supermall with the backdrop vista of Pluto behind it. This is a very large idea that I may start but save for another time when I have more time to spend learning how to perfect blender, the idea is to just go for an idea and if it evolves into something else that’s totally fine by me as I want to make something interesting like the staff or the axe that doesn’t have to be what I set out to do.

August 3, 2020March 16, 2024

FIN 231 Unit 1

Project Proposal

In My Head:

My way of coming up with unique ideas either comes from my chaotic, randomly vivid dreams or from daydreams from my waking consciousness. My brain is always thinking, which can be beneficial for the creative but can be a detriment when trying to listen to other people as my mind is always thinking of either new ideas or hashing out my current ones in my head. For my first work, I will be working on my original idea of making a cleaver-like weapon out of aluminum wire, the biggest hurdle is making the hilt of the weapon sturdy enough so It doesn’t flop over when holding it upright, and the second is bending the bundle of wires into a perfect curve as the weapon has a fishbone/Anchor like shape, the title for this work is “Guillotine Cleaver”. Blender has been on my list of things to learn this year as I have had two great ideas for either making a blender animation or just a scene that I can port into Unity to make a walkable environment. The Challenge for this is first picking which of the three ideas I want to do first as each is a rather large endeavour but equally as interesting as a subject, the “Synaptic Osier” is quite simple as it would be a water filled empty environment with mountains as the vista. My other idea is a view from Kubrik Mons on the moon Charon over looking pluto, I could incorporate my last idea of having a lot of scans of my hand and important that into blender and form a flower from the scans. The challenge of this is that it is a rather daunting task that I may just do the landscape as having the skybox of pluto may be too time consuming to make.

Guillotine Cleaver:

Introductory Statement:

The Guillotine Cleaver is the second piece of my line of fantasy weapons made out of aluminum wire, the goal is to make a unique weapon that is both interesting to look at because of the root like aesthetic of the wire, as well as being fun to hold which i found by holding the wire staff i made in last semesters class in one night. The idea is to have a Cleaver like weapon in the shape of an anchor/fishbone like structure, having a second piece that is more ominous and menacing that is also very fun to hold and pose with is a more personal way of engrossing yourself in your work. The weapon could also be scanned and put into blender/unity which is paramount as i plan on doing more with this Cleaver later on in my future endevours.

Matirials and Process/ design and layout

9 gauge wire is quite thick so it is ideal for making larger structures and is relatively cheap off amazon(19.99 cad) which is great for me as each bundle is 52 feet long. Unspooling the wire is the fun cathartic part of the process, its almost like you are unweaving all the negative thoughts in your mind and reweaving a new form a mental tapestry which pairs well with the synaptic theme of my other idea. I believe the best way to bend the bundles of wire that make up the blade section of the cleaver is to use a large round bucket to get the anchor/fishbone like shape. The part i am very concerned about is glueing the bundles of wire down onto the hilt section, the hot glue sticks i have is not the strongest kind of hot glue you can buy so i may just be inclined to buy the gorilla glue brand hot glue sticks and i want this cleaver to be sturdy as it is meant to be held. The idea is to have the bundles on each side of the cleaver and one long bundle and one shorter bundle to create an interesting pattern which resembles the edge of gutting knives, which will make the cleaver quite menacing.

Update:

So after many a trial and error, I have found a good alternative to the initial idea for the weapon I was planning on making. The initial idea of a cleaver didn’t quite pan out as I had intended, the idea of using hot glue to hold everything up just failed as the glue could not hold the weight of the wire up so I shifted back to what worked for the Root Staff. So I started making the weapon using only wire with the exception of two spots where hot glue was used to hold the piece together. The whole sword/cleaver wasn’t working so I defaulted to a spontaneous backup idea: I found I liked the x shape I made with the 9-gauge wire so I figured I could make an axe by wrapping wire around the outer part of the x to create a double bit axe. The more I developed the axe the more I found myself invested in the idea of an axe made of roots, a new name for the weapon emerged from my mind: Thread Flayer, an axe to flay the synaptic thread. The blades of the axe are a little odd looking due to me having to redo them because I wrapped the wire too tight together causing the axe to be misshapen. The Axe as of now is almost complete with one exception which is that the axe needs a couple more wraps of wire to fully cover the holes in the top of the axe.

Tracking:

The idea is to start the hilt section this week, making the hilt sturdy enough is the challenge as it has to be thick enough to not fall over while holding the cleaver. Building with wire is very satisfying just like building with a more malleable Lego.

Budget:

9 gauge wire (19.99 cad) via amazon

Gorilla Glue Hot glue sticks (8.99 Cad)

August 3, 2020August 4, 2020

FIN 230 Unit 3

August 3, 2020November 30, 2023

FIN 230 Unit 2

HEADER: EXERCISE 1 CREATING AS CONVERSATION

Man Made Flowers

When starting this exercise, I had a completely different plan for what I wanted to do, however while unspooling the wire I had an unexpected surprise. The wire I cut kind of resembled a flower so I began to wonder what kind of questions would a flower made of wire pose, so instead of whatever I was going to make I decided a wire flower would be more interesting to make as I found the idea of it popping out of the ground next to real plants would be a good muse for a photograph. While outside I found one of my moms unused flowerpots and began to think about how that might look either by itself or beside a real plant side by side. I found that while in the flowerpot the wire flower began to rock back in forth like it was alive, if there was more wind today I would have captured it moving in a video, but there was practically no wind at all today. I added more wire flowers to the pot to add more to the piece but found that I liked the larger flower as a standalone statement as it was more dynamic by itself.

Part 1 How is?

The main idea I take away from “Returning the Gift” is a concept as I am personally invested in the idea of returning things back to nature and having those objects to be transformed and reclaimed by nature. In some weird ironic way the wire flower I left outside has already been turned mostly rusted and the soil I used has begun to sprout new fresh blades of grass. There’s a sense of mystery and wonder that comes from seeing a man-made object turned into rust and overtaken by invading plants, of course abandoning a metal bed frame or a broken-down car within the forest is an immoral practice which is harmful to the forest itself. So having the wire being rusted and the soil sprouting new grass is in itself a thought-provoking statement about the environment being filled with the unwanted scraps of metal we all use and rely on.

doc2 Download

Artist Statement

Mind Root

My initial idea for my final project was something completely different from what I decided to go with; my initial idea was a performance piece of an aluminum wire version of the album Art of Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin. I wasn’t too into performance pieces, nor was I into hurting my back by picking up wire sticks and putting them into my wire basket over and over again. Finding 12-gauge aluminum wire was really difficult as it was scarce, so I decided to buy some 9-gauge wire from Amazon for 20 bucks to at least make my next idea; I wanted to make an idea I had in my head of a cleaver mixed with an anchor as a fantasy melee weapon. The fun part was unspooling the big 9-gauge into a stable hilt; I was able to get something sturdy; however, I overestimated how long I should make it, so I ended up with something that was more staff-sized. When I got to making the tip of the weapon, it seemed more natural to twist it into a root-like shape, just like the hilt; the entire thing looked better as a root-like staff, so I just ended up making it into a staff. I was rather pleased with the staff as it turned out quite good and was quite fun to hold; I wish I was able to make the staff sturdier, but I ended up using most of the 9-gauge wire. The backstory I had in mind was a willow tree made out of a metal root with minds connected to the drooping leaves as a tree of consciousness; I always found the idea of a shared consciousness in fiction to be really interesting as well as inspiring. I imagined a world on the rings of j1407b, a harsh radioactive world filled with something I call “MindRoot”: a type of root that grows when exposed to consciousness. I imagined that the inhabitants of this world would use this tree to forge weapons; they would put their hands upon the base of the roots and use their mind to shape the roots into a given form; the weapon they would forge would indicate their rank. I decided to try and make this willow tree of wire; however, I used way too much glue, which resulted in me not being fond of what I made but then the entire thing fell apart as I melted the glue too much, which resulted in it completely falling apart and to top, it all of I ran out of wire completely so I couldn’t salvage it. I do plan on remaking the Mind Root tree later when I have lots of 9-gauge wire; instead, I worked on making a short 3-minute atmospheric song to go along with the staff, I had a short 1-hour nap last Friday, woke up and recorded the short song in about an hour and a half. My greatest challenge was learning that I could have saved time and wire by being smarter and using stronger glue, so I don’t ruin my next wire piece.