Grasshopper: Building, Learning

First off, big thanks to V. Soler from 'http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum' for helping me out with a component that I couldn't implement correctly. Secondly, more output. It's nothing exciting but it -does- represent my own progress with the Grasshopper.

The second image represents my most comprehensive study to date. It began with a series of (3) catenary curves, deformed toward a common, editable point. Each defining curve is anchored to vertices of an equilateral triangle. A mesh is finally applied, defined by each catenary. Theoretically, it's the first output with basis in structure, gravity, etc.

Grasshopper: Now = Generative Components

I've been playing around with Grasshopper a bit more and while I don't 'understand' it in any significant way, I'm at least to the same level with it as a program/tool as I ever reached with Generative Components. It would be a dis-service to call my faculty with either as 'functional', but I'm fine with 'experimental'. I'll continue my early-morning / post-work studies...

Grasshopper: <3 the GUI.

I'm taking a little time to learn Grasshopper. I hear, see, and realize that it's what all the cool kids are up to. And I've always wanted to be one of the cool kids, despite never quite having pulled it off. Just the same, incomparison to Generative Components, I'm a huge fan of the interface. This isn't to say that Grasshopper is necessarily better (or worse!) than GC, just that it's much, much prettier. Pop culture seems to indicate that 'pretty' can carry something a good, long way.

100% spirals + sine waves for now.
Architecture later. Hopefully.

Weekend Project: Floral Smoothie

Creatively, one of my roommates used the glass upper of our blender as a vase. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to assemble the whole thing and shoot a few images pre-work, post-coffee earlier this week. Were I into video, blending & recording may have been an option.

 A quick little graphic exercise for Saturday morning... Enjoy.

In the spirit of Spring.

Despite the rain.

EVENT: Cut & Paste 2009

This past weekend (21.03.2009) I stopped in on "Cut & Paste 2009", an annual worldwide design competition. 4 designers are pre-selected, given a theme and 15 minutes to produce work.  2D, 3D and Video competitions were held.

Some great work was produced. As an audience member, the most interesting aspects where the individual workflows and directions taken by each artist. Some designs were very similar, begging the question of how a 'theme' also implies a given resolution... but in other cases the end results were wildly different. 

If nothing else, I can safely say that I am much, MUCH slower in CS4/Max than any of the contestants. Perhaps my office should start giving us restricted 'clock time' for our projects: "Design the vertical circulation in 15 minutes!" "Egress diagrams, go!"... every working day becomes a series of 32 15min design charrettes. 

Script: Old pattern, new colors

A B+W version of this had been my background for some time. Needing some time away from monocromatic themes, I added a few bits of code for random color values and re-ran the script.

int R = int(random(100,255));

int G = int(random(100,255));

int B = int(random(100,255));

fill(R,G,B,90);

10000x itterations shown above.

Script: It's been a long week.

A colleague of mine spent some time really, really trying to get a certain facade pattern into a project some months back. The studies were great, but the concept didn't end up impacting the design. Apparently it impacted me, and I've oft thought about how to replicate/study/iterate upon the idea.

Frames #00000001, #00001000, #00359000 follow.