Re: Shape and Form

In regards to this, my submission for our second project titled "Shape and Form," given my explanation that I'm an atheist in my most recent project post, I'd like to share my meaning that I came up with a few days after the day we showed it.

In my opinion, it resembles a head with horns which is how a lot of people see atheists: evil godless heathens. I have a friend that, I believe, can attest to being called such, but even if he hasn't one can easily find accounts on the internet. However, the ring looks like a halo (slightly ironic) above the head to show that despite living without god, most atheists are good people, even great people. Bill Gates, for example, has donated ~$28 billion to charities as of 2007. That was five years ago, and I'm sure he hasn't stopped. The light could also represent the same thing. Light emanating from the inside of it bringing warmth and joy. The cube on the inside of the head represents knowledge, and is red because red is the color of passion, and knowledge is a passion for most atheists.

This was thought up entirely after this project was completed, but maybe it was subconscious all along. I just thought that since I shared the meanings behind my cube, I should elaborate on this one as well.

"Window to the Soul"

Our fourth project was meant to be an expression of ourselves similar to the glasses that we had made previously, but more in depth. The assignment was to find (or in my case, create) a container and decorate and fill it with things that describe you as a person. It could be an overall synopsis of your being, or it could focus on a specific "turning point" in your life.

As usual, I was pretty much at a loss at the beginning of the project because I'm wholly convinced that I haven't really done anything special in life, save for graduating as the Valedictorian of my class, and studying abroad in China for a month. Other than those, I'm a typical (or perhaps even atypically boring) person. I like technology and music, but who doesn't? I tend to keep to myself and enjoy video games. With all my utterly unique (that's sarcasm, by the way) attributes simply piling up in front of me, I went with them.

My first problem was getting an appropriate container and I really, once again, had no idea where to start. I thought about significant boxes and whatnot in some of my favorite games until I discovered the Aperture Science Weighted Storage Cube® from Portal! Portal is a puzzle/platforming game where you have to use two inter-dimensional portals that you fire from a special gun onto a surface to move these cubes onto Aperture Science Super-Colliding Super Buttons® to open doors so that you may move on to the next test chamber all under the watchful eyes of the sentient computer system, GLaDOS.

As you can see, it's a bit on the complicated side, so I got some help from the good old internet. (Portal fans almost have a cult status, so it's quite easy to find a how-to in building one of these.) I found a blog where someone had dressed up as the main character from the game for Halloween and made a cube to carry around as part of her costume, and she explained exactly how she made it. More importantly, she provided a template for the crazy corner pieces. I was able to print them out on cardstock and fold them into the right shape. However, I needed a base cube shape to which to attach them. I went to Hobby Lobby and bought a large (actually twice as large as needed) sheet of foam board and measured out squares to make a perfect 1 foot cube. My dad helped me measure to account for the thickness of the board. Once I had all the pieces cut out and marked, I joined them with half toothpicks as nails and jaggedly cut one of the corners out.

I had originally planned to leave the corner out and open, but my dad suggested that I put it together as well and use it as a sort of lid. It worked out much better than I thought it would, because the jagged way I cut it out in the first place really made it so it had a good grip. I also decided to forgo the small parts on the edge of the cube between the corner pieces, but if I ever make another one, they will be included.

I finished putting the cube together except for the top, so I could have access to the interior to decorate it. Then I fastened the corner pieces to the removable corner and the bottom four corners while I thought of things to put inside. I knew I wanted to include my trip to China and also pay homage to some of my other favorite games, but I needed to describe the more personal side of me as well.

I actually did include a number of personal things, but despite the outpouring of personal information from others in the class, I was still too chicken to point them out. However, I will do so in this post, because I think I should try to be more open.

I needed to add color to the inside of the cube, but I didn't want to go through the hassle of mixing different paint colors, painting carefully, and waiting for it to dry, so I enlarged some images on my computer and printed them out to work as wallpaper basically. The interior walls are simply a wall texture from Portal 2 and it was mainly just to break the monotony of pure white. The ceiling is a picture of the Milky Way, our own galaxy, because I am fascinated by space and what's out there. The floor is sort of one of the personal things, but it was included in jest of myself. There is a meme on the internet known as Socially Awkward Penguin that makes fun of the odd and embarrassing things that people with poor social skills do, and will sometimes focus on how said person acts around girls. I'll admit, I have a crush on a particular girl, but I have trouble bringing myself to talk to her. Therefore, I could be called socially awkward, but as I said, it's something I just make fun of myself for. I was going to find a small penguin figure to put in the center, actually, but that would have just been weird, so I just used the colored background. Also, I have no idea what a penguin has to do with social awkwardness.

As you can see, these pictures were taken once it was all complete (It was incredibly difficult to position my hand to take pictures inside.) I think the best way to explain the significance of everything is once you can see it. Please forgive me if the explanations seem sporadic because the creation was just as sporadic. In fact, the aged photos and the hand print were spur of the moment "that sounds cool" ideas. I included the VIP pass for a Coheed and Cambria concert in the back corner because, as I've said a number of times, they are definitely my favorite band. The Chinese characters in the middle two pictures are the two main cities we stayed in while in China: Tianjin and Beijing respectively, but we definitely spent most of our time in Tianjin. The gears on the chain are called "COG Tags" and they are from the hyper-violent shooter game Gears of War, one of my favorites. The aged photos, as I said, were a last minute addition. I scoured my computer and Facebook for fond memories that I had. The first picture is of my first Coheed and Cambria concert, the second is of my friends, Kyle and Jared, and I sitting at another friends house getting ready to play video games all together, and the last picture is of my parents and I with our snowman that we built on the first white Christmas in my life. I aged them in Photoshop because whenever I think of old sepia toned photographs, it makes me think that they must be of fond memories to have been kept so long. The hand print is meant to be my artistic side, because it has a pencil, pencil sharpener, and calligraphy brush - that I was given by a student in China when she was teaching us calligraphy - all in its palm. The roll of paper was given to my graduating class at the "Senior Pep Rally" and it represents my education; one of the few things that I'm actually proud of.

I'm sure you've noticed the strange markings in the last picture by now and have been wondering what they signify. Well, this is where we get into the things I was afraid to mention...  It's a language from a game series called Jak and Daxter just because I like the series. That has nothing to do with the actual words. Each of the little markings corresponds to an English letter and can easily be translated. It's no Klingon from Star Trek or Elvish from Lord of the Rings; it's basically just English in disguise. The word to the left of the VIP pass simply says "Valedictorian," but it is placed high up on the wall because it is something I'm proud of. I used this word to set the precedent of up high being a good thing, and down low being a bad thing.

I cut off the word just above the diploma because this was sent to a friend that knew the origins of the symbols and could figure it out if he wanted. It is lower on the wall so it's something that I'm ashamed of, and I didn't want to say anything about it, but, as I said, I figure I should start being more open. That word says "depression." Now, I haven't actually went to a psychiatrist or anything, it's just a self-diagnosis, but I know for a fact that when you wake up and wish you hadn't that something has to be wrong. (These are very few and far between.) Although, it's not permanent, as of now, I'm quite happy and have been for some time. Maybe I'm just overreacting to not being a morning person or I'm mistaking normal life woes as depression. I don't know; however, if you read this, please don't worry about me. I'm not that bad. It's just something that I've had to deal with.

Now, as emotionally draining as that was, I'm actually more nervous about the word to the right of the VIP Pass, and rightfully so. No one that I know of has ever been threatened for being depressed, but that's kinda part of this one. Whether it's an actual death threat or just the threat of burning in eternal hellfire, someone is going to threaten me eventually and technically already have by default. That's because that word is "Atheist." However, notice that it is high up on the wall. I'm proud to say that I don't believe in a god, but also terrified because of the effect it can have on a person's life. Some people may not hire me in the future. Some of my friends or family may disown me. I may lose relationships. (If I can ever get out of being a penguin, that is.) As stated above, my life may be threatened, and that's kind of a big deal to an atheist; this is the only one we have! There's no, "Oh well, at least I'll get to see grandpa again," or "There's always next time." People have become more tolerant in recent years, and that's definitely a plus, but this is still a majority Christian country, and generally, they don't take too kindly to the ideas of atheists. I understand there are many religious people that are tolerant, but until everyone is cool with everyone else doing their own thing, we will all, not just us atheists, be under threat from someone. That is one of the reasons I am an atheist. This one I am actually okay with people asking about, though. As long as it's in a civilized manner.

That just about covers the references on the inside, and the outside is pretty mild in comparison. Once I got everything on the inside, I put the top on and the remaining 3 corner pieces. I painted the whole thing with gray primer, then mixed a lighter gray for the corner pieces. If you refer WAY back up to the picture of the cube from Portal, you'll see that there is a logo repeated on the faces of the cube. That is the logo for the company Aperture Science. I decided that I would use the six sides to display different logos, however. I created 6 circles with different logos in the middle to print off and glue to the outside.

On the top, I left the Aperture Science logo to show that I like science, but also to further connect it to the game, Portal.

The back right is the dragonfly logo of Coheed and Cambria. This one was included simply because they are my favorite band. No real meaning or explanation behind this one. The logo itself refers to heroin, because the lead singer's father was addicted to heroin, but that has nothing to do with me personally.

The back left is from a game called Borderlands where four teammates work together to find The Vault: a doorway to another dimension that contains a giant demon monster. That symbol marks The Vault, so it seemed appropriate to mark my box of personal demons with it.

The front right is known as the Keywork. It's one of the logos of Coheed and Cambria. It represents a large solar system comprised of 7 stars - 3 large and 4 small - and 78 planets aligned into a triangle and connected by a beam of energy. Did I mention that the lead singer writes a sci-fi comic book and bases all of the lyrics on the story? So this one can not only be about my favorite band, but also the fact that I'm a mild comic book nerd as well.

The front left is from a video game called Shadow of the Colossus. In this game, you are a young man trying to bring his love back to life, and to do so, he travels to a Forbidden Land where he must slay 16 colossi nothing but a sword, bow and arrow, and his horse. This glyph is the marker for the colossi's weak points. I had to include this, because not only does the glyph look awesome and will likely be my first tattoo, (Appropriate with my size, no?) but the game is literally my favorite game of all time.

Lastly, the bottom relates to my social awkwardness again. The Weighted Storage Cube isn't the only cube in Portal. There is another one that called the Companion Cube that has the Aperture logo replaced with a pink heart. It was meant to keep the test subjects company in the test chambers until they got attached to the cube at which point they were forced to throw the Companion Cube into an incinerator! It's a very silly part of the story of the game. However, I used mine to show that I do want to have a girlfriend that I can spend time with and enjoy the company of, even if I can't really outwardly show it. Hence it being on the bottom hiding directly under the social awkwardness.

I made a few mistakes with the brush when painting the corners, and there was really no way to go back and fix them. I also meant for the dark gray of the logos to match the overall cube and the light gray to match the corners, but that was also a little too difficult to go back and try to fix. Over all, I'm very proud of this and it was a very cathartic experience in simply including my somewhat secretive things. I do regret not actually speaking up and  more thoroughly explaining my choices of color and symbolism, but I guess I was just afraid of the reaction I might get...

Volumetrics

Our third project was called volumetrics and involved finding a generally very small object and scaling it up drastically into unreal proportions.  I had quite a bit of trouble deciding on my subject, first choosing a boring, incredibly simple pencil sharpener, but, recognizing the simplicity of it, I knew that wouldn't do. The only other thing I could think of was a dragonfly, so I went with it!

I never actually did any sketches because since I wasn't actually designing the creature, just merely scaling its size, I thought it better to just look at some up close pictures.

I enlarged and printed the picture of the wing detail to provide a real time reference when creating the wings. I mainly used the head picture to get an idea of how to attach the eyes and it made me adamant about getting the hexagonal compound eyes appearance in my recreation.

I started off with probably the most complex part: the wings. How was I supposed to create a membrane between the veins? More importantly, how was I supposed to create the veins in the first place?! I eventually thought about a plastic used to seal off drafty windows during the winter to create the membrane, and that lead to bending the outer, over-all shape of the each wing out of clothes hangers, because the plastic needs a place to attach in all directions and the wings needed to be stiff anyway. The yellow tape was removed and the wire bent around itself like the other three, and they were all painted black to be more true to the real wings.

With that, I decided I would use the wing detail picture as not only a reference for the outlines, but also the veins. Once I had stretched the plastic on the outlines, I traced the lines onto each one individually with a Sharpie marker. It really wasn't as difficult as I made it out to be. By the way, when sitting like this, the wings have a 30 inch wingspan, just to give you an idea of the scale.

I then needed to figure out a way to create the body of the dragonfly. I didn't want it to be too heavy so clay was not an option, and I needed it to be decently sturdy for transportation's sake. I got an idea, from a friend of mine, to use something called plaster cloth. Which is essentially paper maché on steroids, so of course I would need a structure to which to apply it. I bought two half spheres, a large cone, and a few cylindrical pieces of floral foam, as well as a large sphere and two egg shaped pieces of typical styrofoam. I spent the next couple evenings carving and molding the pieces into the right shapes and eventually got what you see to the right.

The head, main body (the white part), and the beginning of the tail (part right behind the white part) are all connected with the dowel rod sticking out of the front there, and the rest of the tail is all connected by two parallel clothes hanger wires that have been bent downward slightly to give the tail a curve. The aforementioned beginning of the tail was made out of the bottom part of the large cone, the head out of the two half spheres (pointlessly bought separately because they were put together into a sphere.), the main body out of the large sphere which I had to carve down to match the angle of the cone, the tail out of the cylindrical floral foam,

and the little pincers out of the bifurcated tip of the cone.

I had not yet made the eyes at this point.

Once the foam was secured together, my mother and I layered the plaster cloth over the structure generously to come out with this. I was very pleased with how smooth it appeared and how easily the cloth worked. I did start to notice some proportional disparities, however; as a dragonfly with that size body would have a much smaller head. Relatively speaking, of course.

I had to allow the plaster a little time to dry, but soon after I spray painted the entire thing black as a base color. Little did I know that plaster doesn't like spray paint, and was rejecting just as much as it was allowing to stick. I ended up having to touch it all up with acrylic paint and a brush. Once that dried, I painted yellow markings on it. They ended up being too bright for my taste, looking far too much like a deformed hornet than a dragonfly, so I lightly misted over the yellow with some black spray paint for the

final effect on it.

As for the eyes, they were definitely tricky. In order to get the hexagonal effect, I cut up a shower pouf (yep, that's what they're called) and stretched a piece over each eye. I then used some rave hair color for which I had to uncomfortably go to a beauty shop. I used a combination of two colors: a super bright neon green as the base coat to give the brightness, and a misting of a shiny, somewhat metallic turquoise as the second coat. I was trying my best to mimic the iridescence of real dragonfly eyes. I didn't get it exactly right, but I think they came out looking pretty good. I let it dry just a bit, then peeled the pouf off, leaving black lines where they had covered.

I had to touch up some areas around the eyes where some of the hair color had gotten past my newspaper, then attach the wings to the back. Unfortunately, my method of attachment was pretty crude. I simply took large metal staples (usually used to hold down wiring in houses) and stabbed two into each pair of wings, straddling where they meet in the center, then glazed the area over with a transparent adhesive. I would have preferred a more elegant solution, but it worked out pretty well. Here is a picture of the final product with a small size comparison. I must say, I'm pretty proud of the wings and the eyes particularly.