Sometimes late at night, I have my best ideas. In my mind, I developed an idea of the final form. In turn, this had to be evolved there and then. If not I feared that I would lose it the next day.  I prototyped the rough shape in 3dsMax. Below you can see a time-lapse version of the evolutionary process.  Although 3d graphics is a great tool for this, the danger is that the work just becomes a design project with precision shapes. When I will develop the shape from this 3d mock up, the shape will evolve in real life…

As well as this I used today to test the 3d prints. I have just about cracked how the Ant and the Bee will be printed on the machine. They both need to be printed with a base. The first print of the Ant I made, one of the back legs fell off. The reason for this was that this leg was ‘floating’ and was not attached to the base that is automatically made in the printing application Cura.

As well as this I made a test of part of the cloud form developed in the 3dsMax application, I outputted it to 123dMake and then printed the parts in cardboard. Afterwards I constructed some of it with just sticky tape. In the final version, I want lights from different elements to be activated by motion. For the cloud element, I want an internal light shining through the edges of the cloud. At the moment, the elements are coming together. Only tomorrow will tell what happens!…You can also read more about the process of this artwork on the EchoFab blog.

To summarise today I did the following things-

1. I evolved the overall concept sculptural form in 3ds Max (see time-lapse video above)

2. I experimented and solved the problems of solving how to print the 3d ant and bee

3. I constructed a part of the cloud structure using the laser-cutter from a plan outputted by 123d Make

4. I investigated lighting from inside the cloud form, with mind to the final effect I want in the art piece

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