#unsw

australian university gijinka shipping bullshiiiiiiiiii

what the hell UNSW?

IDES1262 has proved to be very beneficial to me and has created a great learning experience where I have seen myself develop. It has been great working a long a process of different kinds of drawings, to model making, to digital model making, to 3d printing. It is a process that I see as crucial to design which drove me to work harder at learning more about each step which I am happy about working through.

I’m happy to say that I am proud of the work I have created, but more importantly what I have learned from them which I have tried my best to convey in each of my weekly posts. The most important lesson I found from this experience was the growth found through failure. Especially during the last weeks which I found most painful and failure was prevalent, it forced me to research more, learn more, ending with me creating much cooler things than I thought I would.

I really enjoyed the weekly task format of this course. It made each step a lot easier to digest as there was time to make up for any shortcomings before the next class. Also, it was extremely helpful to start each task in class with the teachers present to help guide the process and get things started so I could really start experimenting with ideas later. I think it showed how valuable the in-class experience was during the last weeks, when due to lots of people having technical issues getting things set up, not a lot of time was dedicated to helping people with the work. This for me led to a lot more time being spent struggling, and a lot of extra time spent looking for helpful resources which in the end isn’t all bad.

If I had the opportunity to do things differently with the knowledge I now have, I would want to challenge myself even more. The course is a great introduction to a lot of the steps of the design process, but generally things are kept simple so they can be better understood and absorbed. So I think I would really enjoy further and refining the skills I developed by challenging them more, especially in 3ds Max which I see a lot of potential for making cool stuff in.

Building off from last week and the basics of perspective drawing I felt confident coming into this. The first part of the task to draw thumbnail concepts was quite easy and fun. Creativity can flow and its hard to draw a front on view so badly it can't be recognized. My first sheet wasn't very good at all however which lead to a complete redraw of 12 new thumbnails which I think 2 or 3 could be taken further.

Now onto Part 2. The punishment from not taking the time to learn how to draw curves in perspective catches up with me. I found translating what I thought my bottles should look like into 3D drawings to be quite the challenge. They seemed to always come out looking boxy or just like a regular cylinder. I attempted many times to find a way to make the rounded corners of the bottle look somewhat accurate, getting closer and closer every time. Different methods were implemented, I was determined to take some time to figure it out. Adding some shading here, breaking up the perspective box this way or that way. I found drawing oval shapes in perspective to match up all the lines helped a bit. Still after construction lines where erased the bottle went back to looking like a round cylinder. So then shading was experimented with. I thought if I had the basic shape done then what was missing was some faux shadows. This seemed to help a bit but the complex curves I was trying to draw from an idea built in my brain still proved to fail me. I think I got close to what I was after but to me more still needs to be done.

This week's task was a creative change from previous weeks, and I found it useful to highlight the areas where my skills could use a lot of work. To begin with, the amount of time I spent placing the 65*32.5 boxes on an A2 page was absurd, but once I had them I begun sketching the perfume bottles quite quickly as ideas kept coming to mind. I chose pride for the emotion I designed off of, because lord knows I have no idea what 'motivated' means.

I started at the bottom right and worked my way up to the top left, presuming that as I ideated I would have more interesting ideas that I would want to bring attention to first, as opposed to the more basic shapes I had started with.

I ended up creating a good range of shapes which I was halfway pleased with, particularly disliking the top row once I felt I had finished my sketches. I think it's important to also know what you don't like in a design, so I left them as examples of how perhaps too much detail - for example the top right - can detract, and that having more abstract shapes - top left - can make for just ugly shapes. My favourites were the two in the middle row on the right hand side, as well as the more basic tapered prism in the bottom left. I thought these were the most interesting and had the most potential to be expanded upon, so I chose to redraw these in perspective.

I was really quite pleased with how these came out in perspective, especially considering how few straight lines the far left drawing had. I really struggled to get good curves and to accentuate the shape of the bottom of the bottle, but I'm still proud of my progress in perspective drawing. My personal favourite is by far the middle, although I feel like it's not terribly unique in terms of it's design it still conveys pride quite well.

I really struggled adding shading to the drawings, as that's a skill I've always lacked and am still developing, albeit slowly. I don't think it's too bad, and it does help accentuate the shape of the middle one quite well, but I feel it detracts from the far left significantly enough that I think it looked better without.