VisCom update

So, here's what we just recently did in digital VisCom. I guess this would be for portfolios maybe. VisCom ties in with studio a bit more this semester.

Next rotation

Haven't posted in almost a month, so here's the product of what I've done in that time. I transformed my camera into a night light, and then I remade the light with wood and plexi. The light runs on two AA batteries and I actually plan to use the light in my room.

Looking through the left side of the aluminum foil.

You can see the hard to reach battery compartment in the bottom/back of the camera. This is something I definitely wanted to change when I built the final model.

Final model with the frosted plexi in.

Much easier access battery compartment.

 Final model, removing the plexi with the light on.

 Final model without the frosted plexi, and with the light on.

Looking down into the front.

Phase one

So, finished phase one for the studio project. My camera has been a lot of fun to work with, and here are a couple photos that I took with it (it's a film camera that doesn't use any sort of electricity or batteries!):

So, I had a bit of fun with that. Here are my drawings for the first phase:

The bottom left is a section that shows where your line of sight goes when you look through either of the two viewfinders (it might confuse you, so don't worry about it too much). I managed to do a nice exploded axonometric that I put in the middle of the page. Look closely on that and you can see where each piece goes based on the guide lines. Also, I showed the aperture opened a crack (the thing that looks like a ninja star that the main lens connects to).


This weekend will be first year architecture's trip to New York City, so that will be a nice break from the campus.


Also, here are a couple interesting macrophotos of what's behind the front cover:

Second semester, first year!

So, the start of the new semester here at Penn State is three days in, and already I have much to do. A project for studio (more on that later), English 15 homework, Architectural Engineering (A E) 210 homework, I already took a quiz in Energy and the Environment (EGEE 101), and the whole getting readjusted to life here.


Energy and the Environment is going pretty well; it's an online course, and the material so far is basically how and where is energy produced, focusing on electrical, geothermal, and electric. The course format allows me to go through it at my own pace, but I do intend to spend as much time on it as I would if it was a lecture class. I already finished lesson one and there was a quiz at the end, which I could retake up to 10 times, and my best score would be submitted.


A E is interesting so far, as it's the first time I'm doing math since last year. There was a simple worksheet that took me just a couple minutes to do. It was just a review of simple Pythagorean Theorem formulas (triangle formulas).


The Art History 202 class seems like it's going to be more interesting than last semester's 201 class. The professor is a bit more interesting in the way that he speaks about the material.


English is really the only class that feels like a high school one because it's required and there are only a little more than 20 kids in my class. We're going through rhetoric right now, which I find kind of interesting.


Now for studio. Yeah, we're into a project already and we're pretty engaged in it already. On the Monday that classes resumed, we took a trip to a town called Tyrone, and each student bought a cheap (less than $20) trinket, and each section had slightly different requirements on what kind of item they could get. My section was told to find some sort of device that caught our attention. I chose an old camera, called an Argus Cintar. Here are a few photos of it:


Here's the front view. The eraser under it was only to keep the camera from falling because it was on a slant.

Top view.

And side view.

Unfortunately, I can't open the front covering because some of it has fused to the rest of the body, and I can't risk cracking the plastic. I intend to get some film and see if this thing still functions.

Can't upload more than 5MB unless I want to pay

So, the e-portfolio site I've been using doesn't allow me to upload any single file that's over 5MB. Only a couple of my portfolio files (except ones pre-Penn State) are below the limit. So, this marks the end of my usage of weebly.com... Apparently there's some sort of thing that Mac provides that's better. I'm not exactly sure. Anyways, I can upload them to this site at least. Here are the final drawings for VisCom, followed by an extra from a while ago:

So, the assignment was to choose any building (had to be approved by the prof) and do a study on it by examining existing plans and pictures of it. I chose a house called the Villa Shodan, designed by Le Corbusier. It's located in Ahmedabad, India. I was browsing through greatbuildings.com and I came across the image that I reproduced as a drawing on the upper part of this page. What struck me about it was the amount of 90 degree corners and how it seemed so structural, yet I was still pretty confused as to what was inside and what was outside just by looking at the plans, and that piqued my interest.

The plans here might confuse you at first, and I was no exception even after an hour of flipping through the plans and sections. I shaded the parts of the second and third floors that were open to below. There's also a diagram of the grid of rectangular posts that I picked up on quickly during my reproduction of the plans.

Here's the elevation and section of the Villa Shodan. If you look at the plan, the elevation is of the facade on the right side. I tried to shade where it seemed like the walls receded back, to give a sense of order and depth to it. For the section, I noted where it cut through each of the plans. There's also a diagram where every vertical support can be seen.

Here's a little shadow study assignment that also was for VisCom, but due a few weeks ago. Thought I'd just put this in here as well.

Finals week

Sorry for being boring and not posting anything recently. I've been really busy, and I do have scans of my work, but I don't have all of them yet, so I'm waiting until I have all of them before I put them on my e-portfolio site (I'll give you that site after I upload the scans). To keep this from looking really boring, here's some sketchbook scans!

11/21/09; IST Building (kinda); 2:35 p.m.

11/21/09; Notre Dame Paris, France; 11:50 a.m.









11/21/09; D.C. Airport gate D15; 12:22 p.m.

11/21/09; Flight SCE->Washington D.C. United Express; 9:45 a.m.

11/21/09; Fallingwater inspiration; 3:09 p.m.

Semester coming to a close

Well, the semester is coming to a close, and my crit yesterday went better than expected (although I was expecting the worst). Section 1's professor was extremely rough on a few people from section 4 on Monday, and we were with him yesterday, but it wasn't so bad. Here are the plan and perspective of my model:

I also have pictures of my art history term paper drawings. I did a paper about a fictional Gothic cathedral that I created for the assignment.

There's still much to do for other classes, but at least I don't have to worry about studio for the rest of the semester.