[3D] Week 4: Pandora’s Box Revisited

Let’s recap!

The mystery word that I got was ‘Harmony’. Last week, I mentioned that harmony in design means that all the visual elements relate to and complement one another. However, I felt that the compositions that I came up with last week did not relate strongly to harmony – they were kind of haphazardly put together with little consideration for the ratio and overall relation. Hence, I decided to do more research on the word harmony so as to understand it better.

More research

I learned that harmony consists of two sub-categories, rhythm and repetition. Rhythm is the flow showcased in a visual component and it helps to direct the eye movement. Repetition highlights the visual units, connect them together and create an area of attention.

Some examples of harmony. The elements of rhythm and repetition are evident in these compositions.

Overarching Concept

A harmonious layout means that all the elements are in agreement and concord, forming a pleasing and consistent whole.

In an idealistic world, harmony can represent a family of 3, comprising of the father (D), mother (SD), and child (SO). Together, these 3 family members have an unbreakable strong bond with one another. To translate this analogy of a family into my models, all the cuboids in my models are in contact with one another. The wedging technique is used to joined all 3 cuboids. This technique is appropriate as it turns each cuboid into a puzzle piece, and the model will only be complete when all 3 pieces are joined together. There are no ‘floating’ pieces since I wanted all 3 cuboids to be in close proximity with one another to showcase harmony.

As for the sub-categories of rhythm and repetition, it is a challenge for me to showcase these traits since I only have 3 cuboids to work with and it would not be wise to make all 3 cuboids of the similar dimensions to portray repetition. Hence I decided to focus on rhythm by directing eye movement in unconventional ways through my compositions.

I’ve decided to title my concept ‘Family Portrait‘. It is as though I am a photographer arranging these ‘family members’ in interesting ways for a rare family portrait!

Presenting… Family Portrait 1

And… Family Portrait 2

BONUS: EPIC FAIL

It pretty much took me an eternity to finally derive at my final compositions since I just got so confused about the ratios and dimensions! I overthink to the extent that I didn’t even know what I was doing anymore. So here are some of the results of my very confused state of mind…

Failed Attempt 1:

I thought that it would be easier to modify the dimensions of the model digitally than manually cutting the foam. Boy was I wrong. I ended up making myself super confused since I wasn’t able to visualise the final model with the correct dimensions in my head. Long story short, I ended up cutting the foam to my desired size and it made my life so much easier.

I quite like the composition of this model actually… But I kept running into problems due to me being complacent (refusing to cut the foam) and being unable to comprehend 3D stuff…

I had to many dimensions going on. My different views don’t match up either and it was simply frustrating!

Failed attempt 2:

I really liked this composition too since I thought that the long cuboid across was a nice touch. Hence I was really trying my best to make it work. Unfortunately, this long cuboid was a huge problem since it’s supposed to be an SD but it kept overpowering the D (as seen in View 6). I stayed up all night trying to rectify this problem but ended up just scraping it. I later realize that the long cuboid across kind of symbolises division too… which is NOT harmony at all. In the end I really wanted to punch myself for being so foolish and wasting so much time on something that wouldn’t work out.

I’ve learned my lesson the hard way…

Image sources:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5a/94/20/5a9420a4688008d727625cf0518f9969.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e7/0a/e4/e70ae4985c47d8a5d3699ffd7c550916.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/02/d4/7e/02d47e050692563b2a806ef58a16c318.jpg