3D Project 2 – Object

The object I chose for this project was an old phone, the Nokia N97, which still worked but had parts of it that were falling to pieces such as the plastic frame and the cover that I used for it.

I wanted to capture the idea of how the phone never really changed, but it was my perception of the phone that changed. The phone stays the same, and there were no upgrades or downgrades made to the phone when I made the decision to change my phone to a newer and better one. However, the way I looked at my phone change because it was no longer the latest phone and in a way, even though its hardware remained the same, how I viewed the phone has changed because my impression of it is now imperfect and tainted by the fact that a newer, better phone is out there waiting for me. I wanted to capture this idea with my project.

Another aspect I wanted to capture was the age and wear-and-tear of the phone. I decided that my project should not be too well constructed or too refined because it otherwise wouldn’t be a very accurate representation of the phone. Initially i reinforced the edges of the wooden box with corner supports to ensure that the piece could stand firmly, but I realised that it was quite counter-intuitive to my desire to accurately portray the idea behind this project. The phone was in shambles, and therefore the project should too.

Viewing the project from a certain angle would allow you to see a perfect phone case if you moved around enough, yet these phone cases seem broken up when viewed from different angles. This was a play at perspective from me, as I wanted the audience to realise that the way you view your old phone will always be imperfect unless you can bring yourself to look at it from a different angle. The phone did nothing wrong, and the phone never really changed, and if you want for it to be perfect again, you could. This was the concept behind my piece; that sometimes, forced perspective is what makes an object seem perfect.

The wooden box was held together by contact adhesive, and could wobble without the entire project falling apart if you wanted to wobble it. This was to capture the rickety frame that was falling apart on my phone. The body that holds together the concept that I want to express should be as rickety as the case that holds together the contents of my phone, and hence I left the project this way instead of ensuring that the frame was completely solid and rigid.

Overall, I quite enjoyed this project due to the amount of thought that had to go into it. The thought process behind it truly was enlightening to me and I’ve learned newer ways to see things and portray what I feel about these things through art.

3D Project – Final

My final project was modelled after the series of books titled “A series of unfortunate events” by Lemony Snicket.

The model revolved around telling various aspects of the series. Since the series was a long narrative I decided to narrow it down to the film adaptation directed by Brad Silberling.

The project was incomplete due to a few oversights on my behalf. Firstly I was unversed in the use of circuitry and lights, and overlooked the fact that I needed a light switch that could turn the light on and leave it on for more then a split second. This was to be a key feature of my project which would illustrate the scene where Count Olaf refracted the sun’s rays with the use of a contraption to burn down the Boudelaires’ home.

With this oversight I also failed to install the buzzer which I had purchased because the buzzer was unable to buzz for more than a split second as well. The buzzer was meant to symbolise Count Olaf’s entrance into the three protagonists’ life, as he buzzed into their homes.

The basis of my project was for the audience to experience things from the antagonist’s (Count Olaf) perspective. They would see a ball rolling down a series of paths and steps and make a distinct stop at each step to show the intention behind each calculated crime that Count Olaf committed. At the end of it all it would knock down a series of dominoes that lead to a house falling down, symbolising Aunt Josephine’s home being destroyed to pieces by Count Olaf. The “debris” would then hit a switch which would shock the audience literally for a split second, which symbolised the punishment that Count Olaf was sentenced to, which was the electric chair.

When I headed into this project I wanted there to be a form of interaction with the audience; something that they could feel physically instead of simply through visual interaction. Hence I installed the electric shock at the end of it. This gives the audience a more realistic feel of the pain that the antagonist would feel as well, and bring life to the punishment that would otherwise just be a sentence in a book.

The project brought about a lot of complications, as I had to deal with circuitry and sourcing for the parts which were quite hard to find in Singapore and when I did find them, they were available in very obscure and inaccessible places.

The wooden frame was also shaky and I had to install L columns to ensure that the four pillars that made the frame were more stable and able to hold the weight of the hoses which I used as pathways for the marble to roll.

If I could have had more time for this project, I would have also installed some decoration. I felt that because of the protagonists’ characters in the movie, I did not want to overdecorate and would have liked for that aspect of the movie and book series to be included in my project. The children had a knack for building contraptions in their everyday life because of their inquisitive nature and used these contraptions to make their everyday life easier. Things such as the letterbox which would ring a bell whenever the postman dropped a letter were a key characteristic of the film, and they often left them uncovered so that the audience could see the intricacies behind the mechanisms that made the contraption.

Decorations I would have included would have been painting the base blue or making the base look more like a sea, which was what Aunt Josephine’s home was perched upon. The use of wood for the house was because Aunt Josephine’s house mostly consisted of wood.

All in all it was actually shocking how much work I had to put into this to make it become what I would have wanted it to become, and I am quite disappointed in myself that because of my oversight on how much more work and time I actually had to put into the project, I was unable to realise it for its full potential to show.