Project 2 | Surface Design Study: Research and Design

References

Process

I planned to create a pattern that was symmetrical and had light, pastel colours, with hints of darker colours to accent the entire design. I really wanted to involve flowers within the pattern as I was inspired by the references that I had chosen (they had flowers, petals and leaves within them). I definitely wanted something circle/radial based and something whimsical.

I started creating my design a week from now. I was struggling in some areas as I was not properly using the tools that were in rhino. For example, instead of trimming two circles to get a leaf, or using and arc and mirroring the arc to create a petal, I manually molded the leaf by manipulating the points on a circle. I also had a hard time trimming all the details down at the end, as there were so many things to trim. Sometimes I had even trimmed the wrong objects, and I hadn't noticed until some time later. Eventually, I fixed the objects that I had a problem with by remaking them, and then it was time to hatch in the colours. All my frustration had exploded in this stage. I was hatching some areas, pressed enter, and to my surprised, nothing appeared. On the corner of my screen it had said that there were self intersecting loops. I was confused as to what this was at first, and so I did some research to understand what was happening and how I could fix it. I learned that a self intersecting loop was simply a curve intersecting itself twice ( this error usually happens when open curves are joined). Since my design was very detailed and a lot of things were intersecting, I had thought that might have been the source of the problem. Maybe there were some duplicate curves that had been joined with existing curves? Was what I had thought, and so I used the command SelDup and SelSelfIntersectingCrv to try to find the root of my stress. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Too frustrated to continue with this problem, I restarted the design.

I created this pattern in 2 hours (would've been shorter if I hadn't switched colours palettes a gajillion times), which wasn't surprising to me as I had used the right tools this time. Everything is more precise and the positioning of the objects is better. I used the arc tool quite a bit to make the petals, leaves, half circles, and I used the circles to create, well, circles! When it came to trimming down everything, it was pretty smooth and not very complicated. Sadly, I reduced the amount of details in order to achieve that trimming clarity. I will probably come back to this design and refigure some object to make it even better, but that will be a conversation for another day. For hatching, it was pretty smooth as well, except for the fact that I had encountered another self intersecting loop notification! Luckily, I ended up not hatching that area (it was an artistic decision :D), and it came out pretty cool!

This the final colour palette. I had five colours originally, but I wanted more shades and tints and so I ended up adding more. There's more colours and layers than what is shown in this image. It was very painful to choose the colours. I had to get the ratios just right for this one because it isn't a mosaic pattern where someone can just place colours here and there and it would look absolutely amazing! (Low-key wish I did that and made it easier for me though...)

Finals