A reflective blog about the experience in a 3D digital design class.

My overall experience in this course has been that of learning new things and learning those new things in newer ways. The Jump workshops may be mainly responsible for that. I think the Jump workshops were very interesting and contributed a lot to my understanding of the process of thinking, brainstorming, and then brainstorming more and ideation, and then finally developing the product.

I think a very important part of the learning process was also that we were a collaborated class of business and art. So we had more room to develop ideas on a broader aspect. And one of the most contributing factors to the learning was the collaboration of the business and the arts classes. I think it came into play a lot when we had to device the business plan for our group project. The business concept that we needed to develop along with the revenue model and other business aspects which needed the business person on the group to take lead and direct our plans.

My group members and I had to dedicate so much time to this class and the group project that it almost felt like we were really in the process of developing a business that would go on floor come the end of the semester. The experience of planning a business was especially useful for me as an artist and a designer. It gave me a fairly thorough idea of all the aspects and ideas involved in the process of developing a business. As a designer, I hope to do some freelance work and that leads me to think that it is nothing less than a business. It involves all of the aspects of business only that most of the different roles are carried out by the same person.
I think this experience will help me determine a better plan for my freelance career.

In general the experience in class was that of learning things in a way different than we are used to. I liked that experience. No doubt, that at times we wanted it to be the traditional way and know what to expect when but then this was more fun although it was a lot more work than a regular class.

Throughout this course, while working on the personal blog assignment and the group project assignment, the greatest challenge was to create beautiful yet printable 3D models of our designs. Also another challenge was to have control over the 3D software, in our case SkeetchUp. I personally feel that SketchUp is very limited and that the class could have spent a little more time learning the software skills itself. It was key to making successful and aesthetically pleasing 3D models.

While I worked my way through the project to develop my henna inspired 3D designed and 3D printed jewelry, I realized it even more that my software skills and the software I’m using are very limited. And that probably made me reassess my plan for the six weeks. The models that developed through the process don’t look the way I had imagined or the way that I had intended for them to look.

I feel the need to go back to the drawing board and develop my designs further to fall more in line with my vision. Also, to be able to successfully develop this in to a complete jewelry collection it would need a lot more work in the design process and the printing process. The hand drawn designs seem more developed than those that I designed in SketchUp. This has been the general experience not only in the personal project but also in the group projects that we worked on through the course.

Also, I feel like my experience with the business aspect of the class has helped me develop a vision for this project if I were to turn this in to a real business. It has helped me realize the risks and other factors involved in making this project take shape in the real world. Overall it has made me realize that I must do more research in terms of what software may be more useful to develop designs that are curvy and detailed like what I imagine from my henna inspired jewelry.

I am still working on the branding, logo and visual identity of my products and company. As a first draft, I have designed the above logo for myself. But maybe I will do some more brainstorming and tease out a better design.

I just have an image of the spinbots that I played with as my attempts at uploading the video of the bots while they were spinning has failed. However, in this image you do see the spinbot in action, somewhat blurred due to its fast motion.

I had a very interesting experience at the makerspace. I played with the play dough and created the external circuit board to operate the keys of the laptop and play games and music using that. I also tried my hand at creating something using the lego pieces. The amazing lego art created by other classmates were almost intimidating. There was a lot of action going on with the legos and the origami. I loved a lot of pieces created using the origami art.

However, I chose to spend more time playing with the spin bots as I found them very intriguing. They somehow reminded me of some kind of game or a piece of art I had seen being play or created as a child. All the way long back when I was about six or seven years old I had seen someone I know created complex star-like patterns using repeated circular lines on paper. I hoped to somehow recreate a complex pattern using the spinbot. With not so much success at it I was able to create a lot of colorful and complexly intertwined circles.

It was a very interesting experience. I would really have liked to ask someone to teach me how to make the origami art. It has always fascinated how people create such complex shapes with a flat object as paper. Maybe, someday I will teach myself looking at all the tutorials that there are out there.

Pendant Design Process

Although late because of my international travel for a family wedding, I am posting pictures and details that will take you through the design process that I went through in order to develop a 3D model of my henna inspired jewelry. I designed a pendant that is inspired from the flower motif that I use in my henna designs. This kind of motif has been a favorite for a very long time and I would love to adorn it as a piece of jewelry and see others use it.

Pendant Detail