Personal Totem
Using Maya, I 3D modeled cylindrical segments and detailed them in a totem-pole style. The project is unfinished.
At the start of the year, I started by working on a freehand Maya project, where I was going to create a totem pole with 5 segments. I took inspiration for each segment from a doodle I did because I find many of the shapes I used appealing, and afterward I decided to 3D model it into a totem, which I could potentially carve out on Smoky Hill's CNC Mill.
At the beginning of the school year, I started a doodle to brainstorm. Starting with a blob of a 'bird', I used only pens and continuously added lines around it. As I added those lines, I used image recognition to build off of them into actual drawings. I divided each drawing by a barrier consisting of a concentric bubble, with tiny tangent lines connecting the bubble to the actual image. When viewed as a whole the drawing reveals even more unique shapes that the brain recognizes as familiar objects. Many of these shapes were unintentional, which is what made the doodle into an raw, interesting art piece.
I wanted to do SOMETHING with the doodle but I didn't know what. When I heard about Smoky Hill's new CNC Mill, I thought that a totem using ideas from the doodle would be a good project to test it out. I started in Maya, skipping the design process and opting for the freehand style I used in the doodle I was using for inspiration. I started with the totem segment, where I created a cylinder with 12 subdivisions. I then cut a ring out of the top and bottom, which would be bridged to physically connect but visually separate each segment. I then duplicated the blank segment 5 times, before proceeding to hide the segments I wasn't working on yet.
As pictured, the project went unfinished. I began work on two of the five segments, and while I could claim that I finished those segments I wouldn't call them ready for presentation. The first segment is four eye shaped circles surrounding the segment. While the eye motif in the doodle is inconsistent, I liked the general shape on the totem. The second segment is a pointy shape attached to a circular extrusion, as pictured in the mid left of the doodle. I found the detail of this piece of the doodle pleasing and thought the sharp look would fit well on the totem. Both designs were pushed into the totem segments, creating a barrier of negative space between the designs and the blank portions.
The project was never finished for a variety of reasons. The first problem is I was putting in too much time to each tiny detail, over stressing and nitpicking the geometry. Since it was my first Maya project of the year, my work was inefficient due to both time management and lack of experience. The work didn't feel satisfying, and I ended up distracted and ultimately more interested in doing different projects. While I still think I could make something interesting out of the doodle, the totem project doesn't hold my attention anymore.
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