Sierra's Creative Adventure

 This week I made a design that I might use for my first project of the course in order to try out the laser cutter. I forgot to document much of the process of creating this design but I used many of the techniques I learned in the "make these shapes" challenge. I had to trim, rotate join and more in order to create the design below.  After basic shapes were laid out, I used the trim and delete commands to clean up the design until I had this: Now that I had my design, I split it into cut and engrave layers sorted by color and brought it to the laser cutter. After a couple minutes, I had a cut out and engraved physical copy of my design. Now that I have tested the design and know its strengths and weaknesses, I can move forward with my design idea for the first project - a sunflower with a gothic style stained glass window for the center. I made a paper model of how all of my layers will fit together, but I did forget to bring it to class. I will include it in my next blog p...

 Gabriel Schama "My work is driven by a desire to push this style as far as it can go, and to constantly seek new forms and compositions." Gabriel Schama graduated from Columbia University in 2008 with a major in architecture. Today he is an artist is based out of Oakland, California. While he has made laser cut works on a variety of mediums, his primary medium is plywood.  His works are highly expressionist, featuring highly detailed, intricate laser cut designs that create layered forms that overlap, intersect and twist to create motifs depicting a variety of subject matter. Some of these subject matters include purely abstract "pseudo-mandalas", silhouetted figures, portraits, and architectural landscapes. All of these subject matters are unified by Gabriel's unique style of intense detail that is brought to life by his years of experience in high-end architectural metalwork and furniture design. In the crevices of Gabriel's carefully crafted details, the...

 For this week's challenge I was asked to make a series of shapes using various commands, inside a 3D modelling software that I have never heard of before - much less used. I found this software much more difficult to work with than other software that I have used in the past, namely Blender. First impressions were not good as I had to start over completely multiple times due to the software malfunctioning to the point that I could not navigate through the document. Nonetheless, I was eventually able to make my way through the document, while learning how to use some basic commands in order to achieve the desired results. The first shape was easy, I just used the circle diameter tool to create it. The following shapes were created in much the same way. The next shape, the star, was created much the same way but the tool did have some additional steps for defining where the points would be that took an extra second to ensure I got just right. Next, I learned how to use the copy comm...