Layering Space: Process

Concept Statement

This piece was created to tie in different aspects and groups within the car community, the first being those who want their cars to look as good as possible by buying the best parts for show, which would be the Toyo Tires and the rays volk racing wheels. The second community is the group that wants to make as much horsepower as possible and buys parts for more power, shown by the massive turbo that is the largest part and the base of the artwork. The last community represented are those who just want to have a good time and drive their cars to their limits, shown by the car drifting with a large angle. My goal was to take these smaller groups in the car community who are separated and look down on each other based on their opinions and help to bring them together to be closer as a single community. This was meant to show that even though there are separate groups, everyone in the community is there because of their love for cars or other automotive vehicles and that they all work together to create the car community. The piece attempts to show this through not only the collage of groups but through the balance of the piece as a whole, to show that not one group can stand out and take over the community but that they all have to be kept equal.

Research

I knew I wanted to make my project around cars and the car community. I began by learning about using gestalt to create an image out of my initial.

I started with brainstorming with the idea of fitting a car into the “G”

I found a font that worked and added detail to the car, and I really liked how that looked but it would not cut out right and the silhouette and the “G” was not that understandable.

I started tackling ideas at a different angle. I started drawing the pictures I wanted and then after I drew the letter around the picture so i knew what type of font to look for. I started with new ideas other than a car.

The turbo is a big part of the community and it already looked like a “G” so I thought that would work well but it ended up not looking at all as I had hoped

I then landed on a font that looked very similar to the one that I created around the helmet in my sketch and came up with my final iteration after taking the shape from a popular racing helmet

I then made the “G” just an outline so that it could be cut out on the laser cutter

I then started looking for other pictures for inspiration for the final part of the project.

I then made notes on the pictures of the aspects that I liked from each that I wanted to try and incorporate in my piece.

Then for the exercise I practiced with making multiple layers to help better understand how to go about the project

Here is a view of the inside. I have a car drifting down a spiral road with the smoke getting larger and the road expanding through multiple layers. I messed around with the idea of using making the viewer have to look through a hole in order to make it look like there was more depth.

Iterations

I started by using the “g” from the exercise and putting other aspects of the car community inside.

Here is my first iteration after not using the “G”. I wanted to use aspects from the car community and make a collage that would use parts from one object and transition into another

I kept the idea of the smoke because I knew that I wanted to use the smoke to show a lot of layering, but I made it less busy, and I stopped trying to incorporate every picture I had as my inspiration in the collage.

I then arrived at my final concept where I made it much less busy and was still able to incorporate a few things that as a collage. I could understand how to make the piece much easier through layers than I could in the other ones.

I started by thinking of the layering process and began making the depth of the barrel that replaces the fan on the turbo. I then made the edges of the face of the wheel and the bolt pattern with the actual face on top so that it looked like a real wheel with some depth in just the face. I then made the turbo to be the outer lip of the wheel as well so that it would all look smooth.

I discovered that the best way to get the turbo shape was to keep the inner line on one layer and the outer silhouette as the next layer to frame the shape, you can see in the first two boxes. I then separated the layers into their own cutout boxes so that I could cut them out on the laser cutter and have them all line up.

Here is what it looked like after being cut out and pieced together

I then made an outline of a car on a layer and then made a separate layer for the detail, being the windows, headlights, etc.

I changed my original idea about layering the smoke as small sections heading back since I didn’t want multiple layers around the edges of the turbo. I made the base layer of the smoke and the car attached to the silhouette of the turbo. From there I added more layers on top in different shapes (similar to the hair example) to give the smoke more movement and depth

Here is some testing to see how it would look. I was experimenting with the type of cutouts trying to show a swirling and billowing of the smoke. I was making the layers overlap and having the cut-out spots cross each other to get a more realistic effect while still adding height for depth. I attached the car to the second layer so that the car would pop off the page but not as much as the next layer of smoke that would be added.

Here I realized cutting certain edges would cut the car from the smoke, so I combined the two layers and decided to have the etchings cut out as well to show more depth in the car as if looking through the glass. What is in read is the section of the car I that had to be etched in order for the car’s shape to be completed. I also had to reduce the size of the cutouts and move them inward to lessen the chance of the cut burning through.

This was the finished product of the smoke with all of the layering on top of one another. I added the bracket on the end of the turbo as well as the tire treads of a very popular tire along the turbo to help with the effect of the car wheel and to add some balance.

I instantly did not like the look of the treads, since all I could think of was a coiled-up tiger tail. I then changed it to have the logo of the popular tire company to look like words written on the racing tires, and to have it cut out of the inner turbo layer.

Production

I believe that was successful in creating a good sense of depth, both in pushing back and pulling forward, also that I was able to adapt to problems that I didn’t like and think of solutions such as how to deal with the car and its smoke, how I separated the layers of the barrel, and coming up with a better solution to tire tread marks. I am very proud of myself as a car enthusiast and as a designer to be able to bring my passions together to create something that the two sides of me really enjoy. I learned through this process how to work with the laser cutter, how to work with the layering process and small tricks that I would not have thought of originally to create visuals, I also learned how to make layering show more depth and have movement through a having cutout to be able to see through to other layers below, which works much better for my idea than just laying one layer on top of the other. Some improvements I could have made would be making better spacers for between the layers so that the paper would not have that small curve in it, the gluing process since it lead to the paper warping in areas that are visible, test cutting so that I don’t end up with a messed up piece that is not the wrong size dimensionally around the sides, and a mistake which I couldn’t really help but not losing small pieces in the laser cutter vacuum that I needed, which ties into the part about scheduling more time with the laser cutter so that I could cut out more pieces and have backups.

After putting the layers together, I was originally going to use the same accordion folds as the exercise but that would have bent the pages and curved them. So, I made wedges with layers of paper and glued them between multiple layers in the barrel of the wheel to gain more depth

This is the final iteration to show the shade selections for each layer to best show depth

After completing the assignment, I practiced with adding color and learned how to correctly add the right color to match the contrast from the original.

Link to Portfolio Project

Layers