Assignment 1 - Sample Book
Sample book
Introduction
This weeks' assignment was about exploring materials with the laser cutting machine with the assigned contrasts we have gotten. The exploration needed to be visualized in our own sample book. The sample book had to visualize the extremes of the contrast in 5 gradations.
The contrast I have chosen was flexible - rigid
Interpretation of the contrasts
Flexible: When I think of fexible I think of a material that you can make how ever you want to make it look like, like chewing gum or clay for example. Rigid: With rigid I think of something that is stiff, unbendable but also firm because of that.
Moodboard - Flexible
None of these pictures on the moodboard are mine. They are from different artists on Pinterest.
Moodboard - Rigid
Translation to animals
I wanted to have a theme in my sample book so that it would be less abstract and easier to elaborate my ideas. For it not to be abstract I would really know how and where I could apply these techniques to because it is not only a movable square for example. For me personally, it would also be easier to connect the contrasts to not only the technique and the material but also to a characteristic of an animal, if that makes sense.
Dragonfly: For my most flexible element I have chosen a dragonfly made out of thin wire. The wire is flexible and bendible to how ever you want to make it look like. And the dragonfy is flexible because it has 6 legs and can move easily from branch to branch because of his 6 legs.
Frog: For my next most flexible element I have chosen for the frog, made into a pop-up page. I think paper is a little less flexible because you can make it how you look like but not totally because it will fold and not look so nice. Also it is thin and it could rip. The frog is very jumpy and that was in my eyes a flexible characteristic.
Fox: In between flexible and rigid I have chosen for a fox made from string art. Wire in between nails isn't very flexible but you can still move the wire a little bit, it is not thick metal for example. The fox is a very addaptable animal. It can live anywhere, from cold to warm and anything in between. Because of that the fox was for me the perfect animal to put in between flexible and rigid.
Buffalo: For the element that is more towards the rigid side I have chosen for the buffalo that is exists out of different parts of hard paper all connected by another piece of hard paper. Because it is not glued together but sticked together like a puzzle it is not totally rigid, it can still move a little. The buffalo is an extremely strong and smart animal but because of it's heavy and rigid bones it's not a flexible and limber animal like the dragonfly.
Bear: For the most rigid element i have chosen for the bear. The bear in my sample book is made out of hard paper layers all glued together. There is no way you can move the bear in anyway. All the layers are stuck together. Of course you have a ton of different bears, some of them are great rock climbers and some of them are not. But most of them have one thing in common: hibernation, also known as the winter sleep. Most bears during winter tend to slow down during winter and like to stay at their home. This part of their characteristic falls in my perspective into the rigid class.
Elaboration
I wanted to have a theme in my sample book so that it would be less abstract and easier to elaborate my ideas. The theme I have chosen was 'beestenboel', because it is a bit of everything/chaotic and I made different animals with different technics with the laser cutter. The first thing I did to start was thinking about what I can do with the laser cutter. I sketched my ideas out and filtered them from flexible to rigid.
Book lay-out
I wanted to keep the bookbinding as simple as possible because I have never done this before and wanted to put my focus on the contrasts. I chose to cut rectangles of 30cm x 15 cm. I made an art board on Illustrator to visualize my idea.
The small squares you see on the left side are going to be laser cut so that I can put big silver rings in it later. This way of bookbinding seemed the easiest and most esthetic to me.
Cover
Making the cover went pretty smooth. I thought of what my animals had in common and it was nature. All animals live in the nature. I wanted to show that in my cover. Again, I first made an art board in illustrator to visualize it. The black parts are going to be laser cutted and the red parts will be engraved. I chose for a fat, bold font so that I have enough space to let things come out of the letters.
I put it through the laser cutter, and this is how it came out. Unfortunately, I lost the inside of the B's, it fell into the holes of the laser cutter. I did manage to rescue the hole of the O.
To visualize the nature that all the animals have in common I put some fake grass (but real flowers) between the cover and another page that I have glued together. The texture looks a bit different than the other photo but I edited the photo a bit.
The cat - String art
As you maybe saw in my sketches I first had a lion in mind. But because the lion had so many details it was too complicated to make string art out of it so I chose to continue with a cat that has less details.I first made a geometrical illustration from the cat in the size of my book.
At the ends of each line I put a dot that was about half the size of the nail I was going to use. A diameter of 0,05 cm. From my first design I learned that it's better if the hole is smaller than the nail otherwise the nail will fall through the hole and the thread won't stay!
I put this design through the laser machine, put the nails into the holes and put the white thread around the nails so that it visualizes my earlier design. I liked that I started and finished the thread on the cats' nose so that I could use the thread as the nose hair.
Iteration:
My first design was a lion and it went totally wrong! I had way too many holes and tried to put the nails in with a hammer which was really hard because all the holes were so close to each other.
After the hammer didn't work out too well I figured why not put it through the laser cut machine? I did that but then I found out later that the holes were way too big for the nails so the nails went through the holes and the thread got loose every time. As you can see there are also a lot of holes which makes making the string art a bit too complicated.
Buffalo - 3D miniature
When thinking of a 3D miniature I looked at a lot of different examples of other miniatures to see how it was done. When making the buffalo myself, I looked at various photos of different sides of a Buffalo. I seperated the face of a buffalo in a few parts for the laser machine. For me, this was the easiest way to make the miniature myself.
When making the seperations, the more I would go to the back of the buffalo the bigger I would make that part to create the 3D-effect, if that makes sense.
Instead of glueing I wanted to make a part that would connect all the parts together. I did this by making 2 splits in all the parts, except for the one that connects all the parts. This 'connecting' part has as many 'splits' as there are parts. These connecting parts are on the upper left side. I put this through the laser machine and this is how it came out:
When I saw the result I already wished that I made the splits a big wider because the paper was almost thick as the split. This made shoving the parts into each other really 'rigid'. Which is funny actually because this is number 4 of number 5 of the most rigid designs I created. So in this sense, it doesn't really matter. I did made two 'connecting' parts but I only managed to use one of them because the splits were too thin for the material. When putting the parts together, this is how it came out:
I'm not super happy of the result because it is kind of awry because I could only get one of the connecting parts in it. But I was happy enough with the result to move on to another design because I still have a lot to do D:
Frog - Pop-up
For the frog I choose to do pop-up. Because this technique is somewhat flexible. This is the tutorial I used as inspiration. I First fold a 15x15cm paper in half, because this is half the size of my book and then I still had some space left for text. After I folded the paper in half I cut the paper halfway on the middle of the paper (see picture).
After I did this I folded both sides on the cutted part in 90 degrees:
When I opened the paper it looked like this:
I 'popped' the mouth of the frog on the other side of the paper so it looked like this:
I closed the paper again and I drew two lines about the same size and angle for the eyes of the frog, it looked like this:
I cut the lines and opened up the paper again and 'popped' the eyes like I did before with the mouth, from the other side of the paper:
Iteration:
Now it kind of started to look like a frog already, I tried to make it green with paper but then it didn't really turn out like I wanted to. I tried to make the same on a green paper and wanted to cut the folded parts out so I could glue it onto the white paper, but it fell apart unfortunately.
I also tried to put a tongue in it but it didn't really pop up together with the rest, so I decided to skip it.
That's why I chose to just draw a bit on it so that it would look more like a frog. The googly eyes made it look a lot better too (: This is the end result:
Dragonfly - Wire art
This was my most 'flexible' animal because it is made from wire, a material that you can bend however you want to make it look like. This one is probably the most simple one I have made, I think it doesn't need to much explanation on how I made it. I bend a metal wire of 0.4mm thickness in the anatomy of a butterfly and added red fiber paper for the wings. After that I drew a bit on the wings to make it a bit less boring. The dragonfly by it self wasn't something I was proud of. But all together with the fake grass and the engraved wood made it come alive a lot more.
Bear - Layered art
I am probably the most proud of this bear. It was also the most complicated one to make. The bear consists of layers that are glued together and therefore it's my most rigid one.
I first made a simple geometrical illustration of a bear, I then cut most parts out of it in Photoshop so that I could easily trace the lines in Illustrator.
When I imported the last picture in Illustrator I mostly traced only the outlines and then filled it in with different shapes. The drawing was more as a reference to see which bodyparts have to stay together in the geometrical pattern to keep the depth.
I then copied this board a 6 times. After every copy I deleted some lines. Every board is going to be another layer later. That's why you can't have the same lines on every board, it won't create the 'layered' effect.
The red and blue lines are cutted first and then all the green lines, in case the material would move and the pieced won't be exactly fitting on each other again.
End result:
I wanted to paint every layer another color with neon bright colors but unfortunately there wasn't any paint at school so I kept it like this.
Reflection
Overall I am pretty proud of my end result. Of course there are things that I would have done differently or added if I had more time. But I think I have used my time optimally and I have learned a lot about the laser cutting machine which is the goal of this assignment at the end.
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