OUGD603 - Brief 7 - Build a home for Wildlife - Development - Pattern Development and Lasercutting for Crit

Pattern Development and Lasercutting for Crit 

- Digitalising the drawings from the bark rubbings allowed them to be used as shapes within Illustrator making it easier to add colour to them

- to allow the patterns to be the focus of the design but to also integrate colour into this two colours from the colour pallettes taken from the bark images were used 

- the use of these colours within the designs would link the patterns back to the original tones seen in the bark allowin the design to reflect both the colour and texture of the bark

- layering darker colours over lighter shades allows the patterns to stand out and better reflected a sense of shadowing and the crevices that are found on tree trunks 

- a combination of the use of the colours in the top design and the shapes within the pattern perhaps make it look a little like leopard print so potentially the colours would have to be swapped round to make it look less like this. 

- Different areas of the patterns created were captured within the rectangular frame that would make up each of the sides of the bird box

- each side of the box aimed to be computationally different to the others so areas for the sides were picked so that there were no obviously repeated elements and that there was a good balance between smaller and larger elements as well as background and foreground elements

- Having all of the sides of the bird box covered in the pattern would create a sense of the birdbox being a tree trunk enveloped in bark

- Using a different part of the pattern on each of the sides would create variety within the design whilst also reflecting how no two bits of a tree trunk are the same

- The same areas from coloured patterns were used for the line drawing designs

- the line drawing designs would be rastered on to plywood creating a dark brown design on the lighter wood.

- the process of etching the wood would create texture and depth to the lines within the design reflecting the crevasses and the tactile quality of bark, whilst rastering directly onto the wood would allow the material to be part of the design reflecting the material that trees are made from

- the use of the exposed wood would also allow the design to fit better within a natural environment whilst still looking contemporary  

- To lasercut the designs the drawings were outlined in Illustrator. Within the lasercutter software making the lines green and adjusting the settings so that the design would etch between the lines allowed the shapes to be rastered.

- some areas of the line drawing designs had negative space within the lines which sometimes rastered the whole thing out rather than just the line, however this can be rectified by adjusting the settings, it just means making sure the settings are correct for each of the elements within the composition

- the depth of the raster was deep enough to create texture but not too deep for the cut to take ages to do

- the laser cutter worked well in capturing the fine details of some of the drawings from the rubbing

- engraving only the outlines of the shapes doesn't stand out as much as the rastered designs. If etching was used the design would potentially not be visible from far away.