Concentric Ribbons

ConcRibbons02
Originally uploaded by Ian Gavin

This one of three images - all made in Cinema 4D. The technique is very similar to the concentric circles. It needed something else though so I added the 'noise', which is actually an exploded cube with the fragments rounded using hyper-nurbs.

I may animate this. A fly-through could work well.

Stripey Goo r4_4_0124b

Stripey Goo r4_4_0124b
Originally uploaded by Ian Gavin

I'm very pleased with the results of these things. There is a 'trick' to making them and they're not drawn one bezier curve at a time but I'm not saying any more than that.

The parallels with Op Art of the 60s is quite nice too.

Motion303

Motion303
Originally uploaded by Ian Gavin

This is an attempt to collage some 3D elements together in photoshop, use some of my own custom photoshop brushes (background) and use some photoshop splatter brushes.

The results were OK so I pulled the whole thing into Illustrator and put some of my own custom elements and funky blend lines in.

My own 303 logo and typography was added at the end.

The result is a little bit clichéd but a least I've had a go.

I may do myself a poster print of this one and/or lay some more vector elements in at a later date.

Concentric Circles from a 3D model

CC01, originally uploaded by Ian Gavin.

The outcome of this particular experiment is not very original, I know, but the technique enables me to generate this along with variations in seconds.

Its made in Cinema 4D by exploding three sets of simple lines (in this case from typography outline vector of a letter 'B') and lathe rotating the through 360 degrees. There are plenty of variables involved that can be easily adjusted to change the result (eg. the explosion speed)

The fact that makes the resulting image interesting (to me) is the way the light falls on the rings. Some are lit right to left and others visa versa. This is because the exploded line fragments are rotating perpendicular to the image plane so some of the resulting rings are concave and others are convex. The colour variations are a result of this effect also.

See more like this at http://www.flickr.com/photos/iangavin/

The Big Push

I've put a stack of new images onto flickr (over the last few weeks) and set myself up a twitter account (today) so its time to continue my blogg, only this time with more of a hope of it being read.

If I'm going to really do this properly I'm gonna have to get my time better organised. What's the best thing to do? Put aside a time of the day to tweet/blogg? Get up an hour earlier maybe. I just don't know at this stage. How do people stay on top of all the new social networking routes?

Going online does give the impression that everyone else manages fine - the tweets keep coming - but I hope that that's just because I'm looking at the wood rather than focussing on the individual tree (so to speak).

It could be intimidating but I'll try not to let it get to me.

3D Block Font '27'

I had a go at a font in Cinema 4D (and a couple of applications of it). Looking at it now, I think some of the letters need a little work. It's called '27' which is a reference to the template of 3x3x3 blocks and its also very close to 26 which is obviously…

I thought that I could make the Cinema 4D file available for sale (would anyone buy it… I don't know).

Fractal Typography

Again the individual letters were made in Quadrium Flame. I wonder whether anyone else has attempted to make letterforms this way because it took bloody ages. I started with a 'spuiggle' of a fractal and kept randomising the settings on full until I had a 'parent' image that looked a little bit like a letterform. Next I created less random 'child' images from the 'parent' image and the one that looked most/more like the desired letterform became the new 'parent' image and the process is repeated. Survival of the fittest - Darwin would be proud. This took hours and hours.

If you can't read it, it says 'Random Toxy' - which is the name I use when I make electronic music.