Art 95: Reflection

Shoutout to Devin’s Art 95: 3D Printing and Prototyping for helping me finally grasp Blender/digital 3D modeling and fueling my Splatoon addiction. 🙏 High school me would have been blown away by the swift ten week progress between my silly octoling Blender sculpt, to my detailed figure of my splatsona. But how exactly did I get here?

Blender:
With Devin’s guidance on tips to providing tutorials, I learned the basics of Blender modeling that I implemented in models throughout the quarter. These include:
• Blender shortcuts (scale, grab, rotate, etc.)
• Modifiers (remesh, subdivide, decimate, boolean, mirror)

For example, I used the method to create "ribbing" in the Practice 3 column, to also create the trashcan lid ribbing for my gravestone. Additionally, these tools and Google have also been helpful in troubleshooting when modeling issues arise, such as the boolean tool not unionizing objects properly which required other workarounds.

PrusaSlicer:
On the other hand, for my first time handling a 3D printer, I gradually gained understanding of PrusaSlicer's importance in generating g-codes. When prints fail, I learned to step back and access the situation – are there any settings that I should change? These include:
• The brim width
• The support style (organic vs. snug)
• The bed temperature (learned to change because of Devin’s note that we have new printers + change accordingly to the filament/model itself)
• The print wall thickness (vertical shell perimeters)
• The infill pattern
• The quality of the print

From model to model, I adapted various settings for their prints. For instance, when I attempted printing a figure small, the supports kept snapping off around its legs, causing the nozzle to continue circling around indefinitely. To mitigate that, I opened PrusaSlicer and increased the scale of the figure, made the vertical shells thicker, and increased the brim and the bed temperature. Luckily, while some supports printed wrong, the figure itself was still able to stand up and complete printing.

🐙 Splatoon Brainrot:
While Project 3: Hybrid Creatures has been the most frustrating to model myself, I'm pleased its outcome and how it has benefited my digital sculpting skills. Initially, I felt intimidated attempting to translate my 2D sketch into a 3D model. "How do I even sculpt this part" was something I often wondered. But as time passed, I became more confident in understanding the steps to create certain shapes. Although, I had gotten annoyed trying to sculpt my tentacle hair, but luckily I referred back to our Practice 4: Sculpting and Google to figure out how to convert curves into meshes to continue sculpting. In the end, printing went swiftly and I finally achieved my goal in having my very own custom designed figure! Thus, Project 3 has been very satisfying in terms of personal growth, creative growth, and problem solving.

Conclusion:
While my peers and I ran into printer availability and time constraint issues in the last weeks of the quarter, Art 95: 3D Printing and Prototyping has been an extremely enriching course that I highly recommend anyone to take. There's crack put in here because I somehow understood Blender and could model better than if I continued attempting the notorious Blender donut tutorial (I'm grateful I no longer have to make donuts). Feeling less nervous, after Project 5, I went on to make more models of my own. They are raccoon-themed gravestone, my club's CCPlus creature, and Splatoon octoling beads (all pictured below). In just ten weeks, I conquered the massive hurdle of even touching Blender, to being comfortable enough with the program to create sculptures on my own without outside support. Past Art 95, while lacking access to 3D printers, I hope to still improve my sculpting skills and learn more about digital sculpting, such as adding colors or simple animation. Until then, my prints from Art 95 will live rent free in my head and my heart. 💭💫

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