SPINEY GATOR's GD PROJECTS

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Custom Staircase & Lighting Designers
Some artists or architects might go a little far in the pursuit of creating the “glory piece” of a house, building, or room. With custom houses come custom features and appliances. You would have to be able to incorporate the flow of the rooms when you design a staircase, and be able to fit with the style of the home, i.e. a grand staircase like the one pictured would not have a place in a traditional southern mansion. This particular one is crazy! Think of the liability if someone was to fall. This house would not be one for the elderly or kids.

Dale Chihuly, artist, and Paul Gregory, designer of the Waterford Crystal Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball, are two people that have created unique lighting fixtures that have to be equally cognizant of the surroundings, purpose, and manner in which they will be displayed. Since their pieces have to be lit up they have to take an account of how light will bounce off and transcend into the room below. Obviously the Chihuly piece that is pictured looks really hard to install because of all the glass pieces that are spiraling outward. He would have to think ahead to what it will look like from all sides and what it would look like illuminated and not illuminated.

By the way if you type in “creative staircases” into a Google search you will come up with some amazing, and seemingly dangerous, staircases. One was carved from a tree trunk in the middle of a house. Another one was a slide and stair combo. And one was even retractable!

Cake Decorator
This is along the same viewpoint as the fruit sculpture- cake decorator. You are trying to take an object and make it edible, at least enough of it to be shared and then eaten at a party. Food Network has a television program named, Ace of Cakes, where a team creates crazy objects out of fondant, cake, and icing. Sometimes the cakes go as far as having motorized or illuminated pieces. It seems in the cake-decorating field they have conquered the typical two-dimensionalness of the sheet cake and moved upwards to the third plane. With the use of airbrushes depth and special textures can be added to any cake and made to be more realistic of the object it is trying to portray. One can only guess where you would begin to cut the cake if it is in a three-dimensional form.

Architectural Modeler
So you are given a couple of sketches and perhaps an AutoCAD file and you must recreate a building using foam, plastic, and paper trees. That is a lot of glue to dry. Besides a good background in geometry, architectural modelers need to be able to create molds of small windows, lampposts, fencing, etc. that are specific and customized; and make plastic pieces that they later have to fit together like a puzzle. With new technology merging with new construction
materials, modelers need to be creative when recreating a more modern structure with twists and curves that are neither natural nor typical of what we think a building should look like. The model in the picture is a big as the woman sitting next to it. Can you imaging the thought involved when considering the placement of each piece?

Food Sculpture
Ok. So the Culinary School might be upset at me for saying this but you don’t need to take a class or have a degree in culinary arts to carve fruit and vegetables. If you can carve something out of an 8x8x8 floral foam box then you can carve lily pads out of a watermelon. Heck, I‘ve carved things out of pumpkins every year since I was 6 years old.

Carved fruit baskets and vegetable trays have become very popular nowadays, and it has been slowly moving flowers out of the market. Don’t get me wrong, though, flowers are still very big as a gift- especially last minute. I remember watching the news a couple months back about a school banning cupcakes to celebrate kids birthday parties. Some parents thought that bringing cupcakes for class parties was unhealthy and parents should bring in fruit baskets instead.

Set Design/Prop Maker
As a prop maker, you’d be to creating realistic-looking objects for use in theatre, film and elevision. You might make anything from fake jewelry to replica weapons. Skills needed are knowledge and competency of carpentry, sculpting, casting, sewing, painting, welding and computer-aided design. You would work off of rough sketches to detailed designs, carry out historical or cultural research in order to make authentic-looking props (which might mean traveling to other countries), and experiment with different materials and techniques to create realistic effects (other than the typical metal, latex, fiberglass, wood or fabric). Of course this would require you to be able to use various tools other than a pen or pencil, you know the kinds that plug into an electrical socket and make loud noises. You can combine your love of Home Depot and Pearl Art Supplies!

Parade Float Maker
A parade float maker is a pretty dirty job-at least that is what the Discovery show thinks since that is where I got the idea. You are essentially building a wire mesh frame atop a motor vehicle and then decorating it with various floral arrangements to make it “come alive.” A float maker has to be conscious of the audience so they have to make both sides of the parade route equally awestruck by the design. The following pictures and except are from the creator of “Dinner’s On…Fire!” float that was in the Rose Parade. It proves that the designer has to take into consideration the audience, driver, safety lookout, and floral workers.

“The barbeque was now a brick design, so there would be a place for the float driver. The "Happy Face" was gone from Papa's apron just in case there were any copyright issues to the design. The float was done in two levels to enhance the view for parade viewers. Overall, though, the basic design would stay very consistent through the actual construction of the float.

A few more changes can be seen in the final version. The picnic basket has been moved forward to provide a spot for the safety observer on the float, while the overall setting has been changed to a more gradual slope. The tree trunk has been bulked up to include a sophisticated hydraulic system, as the tree would be too tall to get out of the construction building or under the bridges in Pasadena unless it could be tilted to lower the top.

Parade Balloon and Inflatable Costume Maker
A graphic designer that can think out of the box-- way out of the box-- can
become a designer of parade balloons and inflatable costumes. Not only do you
have to first put your design to paper, create a small-scale model, and visualize it
with the techniques and materials of an inflatable balloon, but you also need to
keep in mind aerodynamics, properties of hot and cold air, and the fact that
people will be moving it along, either outside or in. They have to be able to
create a design that will be easily recognizable with a rounded frame or structure,
and use materials that are not meant for detailed work. Although, balloon
makers now use airbrushes to create 3D features. The picture illustrates the
process that PARADE GIANTS, a custom-inflatable balloon company, goes
through when making a parade balloon for The Peace Dove Project in 2006.
By the way inflatable balloon costumes cost anywhere from $1,000-20,000 (5’ to
30’+)

Thursday, May 8, 2008

JEAN L // PIXIE // FORM AND SPACE

This piece is a sculpture made by an artist that designs lifelike fairytale sculptures. Mainly fairies. Since she was young the artist had always had an appreciation for fairies and imaginary things of that sort. So when she began sculpting she decided it would be a neat idea to make tiny fairy sculptures. Soon after she designed a couple she thought it would be even cooler if he tried to make the sculptures look as lifelike as possible. As soon as I saw this picture of this sculpture I thought it was VERY interesting, and kind of creepy as well.