BDS: 2011

Monday, August 22, 2011

New Semester

Starting this new year, I realize it is time for me to bring out the old blog once again. I still have trouble remembering to put things up on this, but maybe with time, it will become second nature. Anyway, currently I am working on my animal project for VISCOM and I'm am thinking I will select the nautilus. Still a work in progress, but I think it has a lot of potential.

Thursday, May 12, 2011

My Finished Chair

Here is a picture of my Chair completely finished.

Finalization of Work

Here is adding the finishing touches and the finished product.

Continuation Back Support

This is just more continuation of construction of the back support and figuring out how it will all support well.

Chair First looks

Here is the what the first weekend of building made. I managed to create the seat and am now topping the back with cardboard supports.

Final Concept model

Here is the final concept that I have worked on. Now it is time for the real chair

Honing the final concept

Cardboard models

Here are the initial cardboard layouts I had in mind.

Power Point

So I decided to narrow it down to two chairs - I like the look of the barrel chair that Frank Lloyd Wright made for Wingspread, but I also like this chair that I already have. I may have to combine the two to create that piping and also have the comfortability. We'll see what comes of it.

Day two

I am still deciding how I am going to make a comfortable chair out of cardboard. I looked up some chairs online and looked at how the structure worked on all of them. Of course they were all wood and didn't need a lot of extra support but they showed me some basic shapes for my chair I will be designing.

Chair day one

Now that chair project has officially begun, I can't decide what to do. I have a feeling I would like to make a chair that is comfortable but I don't know how that could be done with cardboard. I could make a lounge chair or even a chair that you are cradled by to get that comfort. Maybe I could use a grid in the framework and contour it slightly? I don't know. Just some thoughts to think about right now.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Famous chairs

so I haven't looked into this yet, but I have some ideas for chairs I may use. I also have a "designed" chair I got when I was born from my uncle that may be famous, I don't know. I think further research into that may tell something. If anything, my uncle sells designer chairs as a profession so I may need to ask his help.

Last Day of book

Well, the day has finally come to finish up the book and it was very nice to have a day to look at everyone's work. I gotta say, a lot of good ideas for books came out of this project and among my favorites had to be the carousel book and the shower book. Craft and experience worked really well with those. I think I did a good job as well, but I don't want to sound arrogant (I mean, come on, three days in the print lab printing off 24 prints? At least a pat on the back for that one)

Final prep and print lab rant and rave

So the layout is done, some text was added, and the tree is all ready to go. My expensive Somerset paper is getting cut and ready to feed into the printer. But wait, the settings for the printer are wrong and the alignment is off! Now the printer is jammed! Now the paper is not the right thinkness! Now the paper is not the right size! All these things and more tended to be my entire day friday, some thursday, and, thankfully, only a little on Saturday. This gave me Sunday to work on my process book, when I was hoping to be done with it before the weekend so I could not have to do any work. Oh well, I guess that whole thing goes along with the whole technology hating me thing.

Work Day 2

Now that the photos are chosen and everything is set, it is time now to go onto illustrator and photoshop to clean up the photos and try and make a redwood tree sillouette for the other side of the pages. This, however, was the easy part. As usual with this kind of thing, technology and I don't have a friendly relationship and it took me longer than it should to make the tree, color it, and crop each page out of it. Well, that is finally done now and I am happy to put that away.

Work Day

So today was a work day on my book and I managed to figure out that I am going to have six pages with six photos full scale on each page. On the other page side will be a tree that sprouts taller and taller when the spine is taken out.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Process of spine

Well, here are the preliminary trials of me trying to figure out just how the construction of this book style is made. Ultimately, I had to throw the instructions to the wind and copy one that was already made. The last one is when this happened and it finally worked.

Final book decision

So my book concept is going to be a variation of the concertina binding I had before, but the binding can be taken out for an even larger extension of the pages. Through the magic of time lapse, I'll fast forward to what I think the final product will look like, and I don't think it will be that much different from the actual final book, but who knows...

Book Layout

So now that I have the photos decided, I have to decide on a book design. Here are the three I have so far:

First critique

So I have my pictures and drawings and wordlist that I need, and after discussing it, I think that pictures will do the best job of completing the experience. I now have the wonderful challenge of sifting through my many many many...many pictures to find the ones that I can initially test for the final cut. At least it will be somewhat easier to eliminate the pictures with my sister and me in them-that should cut it down by a third.

Back from Muir Woods

Well, I'm back now from Muir Woods and I gotta say that is tiring work hiking for 9 hours, but I got a lot of great pictures that I can use for the project. Still don't know how I'm going to present it, I was imagining what I could do to try and bring all the senses into my book (even including real bark from the forest, but my sister wouldn't let me take anything). I also thought of bringing in the smells too, but I don't know if they have redwood incense to buy anywhere. Oh well, I guess I'll figure something else out.

Spring Break 1

So I am in San Francisco right now and I am about ready to head to Muir Woods now with my sister. Planning to take the entire day hiking in the forest to take pictures and end at the beach for lunch. Supposed to rain, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem because the trees shield most of the rain.

Book Project Experience

I am thinking that I will be doing the Redwood Forest because it is a special experience that I know will be appealing and I will be going there for Spring Break anyway to take pictures with this project in mind. I figure I'll also be able to do some drawings just in case I decide to go that route instead.

Book Project Day One

I really have a terrible time with keeping up with this blog. Oh well. I guess acting out everything I was thinking and doing each week will suffice for now. So, considering it is the week before Spring Break, I am really looking forward to having a nice week lng vacation in San Francisco! I can't imagine what I'll be doing, but I hope I can find an experience that will work-maybe something that has to do with nature? I don't know...