Assignment 11.1 - 3D Design

I’m no stranger to riding the Struggle Bus. I board it frequently, I almost always find a seat and I ride it for as long as it takes. But, dear reader, I’m afraid I’m still on the bus. It keeps rolling down the route known as Tinkercad and I can’t get off. 

I wanted to revisit my Hot Dog Bomb, because I thought that translating it into a 3D context would be fun. I think the biggest challenge I had was navigating the shapes in "space." Somehow they would always end up way all the way outside the workplane. It took a bunch of practice and time to get everything aligned (it was helpful when I discovered the align button). I wish there was a way to smooth out the seams in between shapes – I "joined" the shapes, but that just seemed to group them. The existing seams take away from the concept (a hot dog that is transmogrified into a missile), especially at the top. I also had a hard time getting the creases at the top to get at the hot-dog-ness of the image. I found the star shape and tried to mesh it on the top enough to be subtle. 

As for the text, I initially drew it out because I wanted it to read as "mustard" but I realized that it didn't really get the point across. I instead went with the standard lettering and yellow color – an industrialized print with with a color that subtly references mustard. 

I think overall, the struggle came from trying to navigate the 3-dimensionality of it all on a 2-dimensional plane. The screen is flat, Tinkercad is flat, and there's no way for me to physically touch the object. I experienced a similar struggle when I was first learning Illustrator, and the act of drawing was done by clicks and dragging a mouse rather than with my hands. I know that there's a crisp precision that can be accomplished with working digitally that cannot be achieved when working by hand, however, there's a hand-brain connection that comes a bit more naturally to me when physically working with a 3-dimensional material. 

But once I get the hang of it, I'll probably enjoy it. In the meantime, in the words of Percy Byshe Shelley, “Look upon my works ye mighty, and despair.”

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