Jenna’s Story

Research and Concept

Letterforms

Letterforms have the capability of being presented in countless ways, with variations to style, textures, and dimension. What I find to be the most intriguing characteristic of letterforms is that through all of these variations, the meaning of the letterform remains unchanged because each letterform is recognizable by its individual formations. Because of this fascinating asset, designers are able to manipulate many aspects of a letterform all while keeping its integrity.

First Glyph: “J”

The first glyph I chose was the capital letter “J,” as that is the initial of my first and last name. This letterform has a long stem protruding from the top and a curved semi-circle at the bottom at its base. The letterform “J” also sometimes has a “hat” that sits horizontally atop of the long stem, although this does not appear on all forms of the capital letter “J.” This is an odd component of the letterform as this part is actually optional to have, so it is not necessarily considered a defining characteristic. This specific formation is what produces the full letter, “J.”

Inspiration
Sketches

Second Glyph: “e”

The lowercase letterform “e” is a bit more interesting than one may expect upon first glance. It is comprised of a long line that almost completes a circle, but does not ever tough the other end. This circle-like line extends up, to the left, down, to the right, and then up a little again. It also has a short horizontal line that appears in the middle of the letterform which connects the upper-end of the circular formation by extending leftwards to the middle of the circular formation. This letterform differs greatly from its capital counterpart.

Sketches

Iterations

Iterations for the glyph, “J”

For my first glyph, the capitol letter “J,” I was excited to pursue my fancy-looking and unique interpretation that I thought of while sketching. Using the spline tool to create my sketch, it was difficult to get all of the points where I wanted them to be exactly, so this part was a little time consuming. Once I created a created a sketch I was happy with, I extended it to become a body. This design had a small, claw-like form as the “hat” of the capitol J, which I decided looked awkward and almost made the J difficult to recognize.

Below are pictures of my first design.

I then decided to extend the hat to be longer, making the hat more recognizable. I really liked the way this looked and it matched more of what I pictured in my head when designing this.

Pictured below is the first iteration I made to my glyph.

I did actually really like this design and almost stopped there, but as I was playing around with it more I found that blending some of the edges made me like the design even better. I think that blending the edges makes the design look more formal and aesthetically pleasing. This extra splash of detail does not take away from the integrity of the design nor the recognizability of the letter J.

Below are images of my second iteration and iframe.

Iterations for the glyph, “e”

My second glyph, the lowercase “e,” I found to be the most difficult design to come up with. Because of this, I wanted to explore multiple designs to brainstorm all of the ways that I can make this print unique. I began with a fairly simple e that had a pointed tail. I actually really didn’t like this design for a few reasons: firstly, it would not be able to stand alone because the bottom of the design is rounded. Secondly, it was just way too simple and I really wanted to push my boundaries with this assignment,

Below are pictures of my first sketch.

I quickly threw out this idea and pursued another, one in which was completely different from the first. I liked the idea of playing with blocks and giving this simple little letter “e” a touch of architectural playfulness. I created my first iteration keeping in mind how blocks can create this sort of odd structure.

Below are pictures of my first iteration.

I liked where this design was going more, however I still felt as though something was missing; this design still seemed to be too simple. I had this idea of blocks building upon one another, almost in a way where if they were actual singular blocks, they would tumble apart. What I decided this design needed was more of a chaotic feel to it, where the form almost just looks like a random array of blocks until you look at it from the front view.

Below is a picture and iframe of my second iteration.

When I test printed my design for the first time, I was met with “spaghetti” from the printer. Upon investigating into this further, I looked to my design to see if anything had gone wrong in the original architecture. Lo and behold, I discovered that my squares in Shapr 3D were not united and in fact could not be united, as Shapr 3D does not allow shaped to connect to each other by one side as my design features. For this reason, I took back to the drawing board once again and created an entirely new model. This time, I created the basic outline of the lowercase letter “e,” raised the face of it to make a body, then drew lines throughout the letterform. With those lines, I created different sized shapes and took those individual faces and manipulated them to create the scattered architectural design I had originally thought of. This design worked phenomenally, and when printed, worked out well. I printed this design with a layer height of 0.3, though, which impacted the integrity of the design. Below are images of my third iteration and its iframe.

Final Prints

First Glyph: J

Something that I got as feedback for my design during our class time was that the “hat” of the capital J almost resembled an inappropriate figure, so with that new image in mind, I took back to the drawing board and reworked my design. I decided that the left-most half of the hat would work perfectly in terms of the print being understood as a “J” and take away the idea of it resembling something inappropriate. I also changed the shape of the half-hat to make it more fancy-looking, and this new design came to mind. It essentially has the same idea as my second iteration of the design on the bottom, but the top completely changed its aesthetic. I believe that the final design of my uppercase “J” glyph is perfect and resembles exactly the design that I had in mind even when brainstorming ideas at the beginning of this project. This is my final print because it is sleek, attractive, and well-constructed. It is able to stand on its own which completes one task I had for it, and it successfully portrayed the glyph, “J,” to be highly recognizable.

If I had the opportunity, I would enlarge the size, add a small hole in the back of it, and round the bottom to make it into a wall decoration for my room. Because I wanted to have this design stand upright and stay within the size constraints of the assignment, I could not pursue this, but I believe the final print works great for its intended purpose.

Second Glyph: e

After reworking my design in Shapr 3D, I was very pleased with how it turned out. Since I was just test printing it for my iteration, I had the layer height at 0.3 to save time and simply see if it would print correctly. I also did not add the appropriate supports, so I needed to adjust that as well to be suitable for a final submission. In my final print, I set the layer height at 0.15 and Infill density to 20% so that the print would come out as clean as possible. I added a skirt as the support in order to give it the appropriate formation integrity. These were the only changes needed in order to print a successful model of the glyph, “e.” I believe that my final print worked out tremendously; I am very pleased with the structure of the design itself and how it printed. I am very glad that I chose to start the design process over again from scratch after my third iteration came out as spaghetti; this allowed me to think creatively and solve the issue that I was having in the most effective way. Without that redesign, I am certain that I would not have a 3D print that turned out successfully. This is the final print because it is clean, the designs integrity is still intact, and it is a direct reflection of the concept I had originally created.

Overall, I am most proud of the creativity I encapsulated for this glyph. Primarily, I was concerned that I would not be able to think of a way to manipulate the letter “e” into something out of the box, but I believe just that. After researching letterforms as sculptures, I was inspired to make something that would have an interesting architectural aesthetic to it. If I ever had access to machinery that could accommodate this, I would enlarge this design into a much bigger print, so that it could act as an interactive sculpture. In addition, I would print other letters with the same design concept as my design of “e” and spell out a word. I am intrigued with the idea of seeing a structure and it looking random from most angles, but being legible from other angles.

Notice: This iframe for the letterform “e” is the same as the iframe from my third iteration, I simply changed printer settings in order to achieve my final print of this glyph.

Shapr 3D First Models

Triangle Cap

This tutorial made the construction of a triangle cap very easy and straightforward. We began by ensuring that we were in a millimeter view and that all snapping guides were on. In the top view, we made a sketch that would then become the basis for our triangle cap. Some of the functions were difficult to figure out, such as the “copy” function, because the version of Shapr3D that was used in the video is not the same as what I have on my app, but I figured these things out as we went along (the copy function is a small button that appears next to the sketch). We utilized dragging the transformation centers to the origin and rotating in order to make copies to make our sketch. We also used the equal tool to ensure that our circles stayed the same size. Drawing the arcs was a bit confusing because I thought that I had to guess where the person in the tutorial was drawing the arcs from, but in a later step he instructs to make them all tangents and set a 50mm radius, which made my sketch look like his. Once we made the sketch a body, we his the body and the sketch to begin a different part of the object. This was important for me to learn because I did not utilize this when making my first Shapr 3D sketch for the Self Expressions drafts. We drew a new sketch and used the revolve tool, which I have never used, to create an odd looking shape. Using a new plane, also something I did not do, allowed us to more easily sketch what we wanted and create the holes for the triangle cap. Trimming really helps to organize your sketch as well, as seen throughout this tutorial. The techniques used in this video were ones that I had never thought to do and will enhance future designs of mine.

Photos of the process

Tinkercad i-frame

Tutorial Reference

Model a triangle-cap from Shapr 3D

Bracket-mount

Although I do know that the bracket-mount tutorial was meant for people who could not see the trimagle cap tutorial, I really wanted to hone in on the skills and I thought this design looked intriguing and challenging. Making sure we were in millimeter view and had all on the snapping guides, we began sketching on the left view which is a 2D view, which is easier to sketch on. We manipulated the work plane so that each block represented 5mm, which was better for this design and something I had not thought about before. We drew a an oddly-shaped which we then turned into a 3D body by pulling it out. Being able to adjust the lengths by doing an action and then pressing the measurements associated with it and customizing them helped greatly throughout this entire tutorial. We used the offset tool to create a sketch on the inside of the model which we would later turn into a hole. Drawing a sketch above our work and then pulling it down later to cut parts makes the process much easier than what I had thought you would have to do. Trimming unnecessary parts of the sketches really does wonders in terms of organizing a sketch and design. What I believe this tutorial exemplified was hiding and showing bodies and sketches; in my Self Expressions Iterations I was having a lot of difficulty because my sketches and bodies were all over the place, but throught his tutorial I became aware of how to fix this issue and create a more seamless design. We used the intersect method to manipulate our design and make something that was once a hole into the body we want. Making circles concentric ensures that your sketches are right where they should be and makes them precise. Maneuvering the app was made easy with this tutorial, as every little movement was made clear and vocalized. Cutting material was made easy through taking a sketch and pushing in downwards to cut through another body.

Optimization was another area of design that this tutorial made clear of its importance. We hid our main body and began a different body. We optimized blending by selecting all of the edges we wanted to blend and doing it all at once. Again, using the copy tool, we optimized translating circles. Selecting all four circle filling and pulling them down to create holes was another way that we optimized because this allowed us to not have to do this one by one.

We opened the view of the first body again and saw how they were not one body, and were actually two separate bodies. Using the union tool, we made the two bodies into one; this really helped when it came to customizing the color because you did not have to try and find the exact same color for both parts.

We did a lot of blending in this sketch, especially towards the end. Making circles and arcs concentric also added to the precision of the design. We added a lot of details to this design which I believe makes this tutorial stand out; aesthetics really do matter in a design and this tutorial’s precision on this matter makes me want to incorporate more of these techniques into my future designs.

Photos of the Process

Tinkercad i-frame

Tutorial Reference

Model a bracket-mount from Shapr 3D

3D Scan

I created my 3D bust scan in class, working with a group of 3 other students to get a sufficient 3D scan using a variety of formats. We took turns using the LiDAR camera attachment on an iPad paired with the Monocle Structure Scanner application to scan each other, and while we tried the ScandyPro phone application, I found that the LiDAR attachment worked the best. None of us could manage to get the color on the scan to come out well, even after the LiDAR cameras were reconfigured. I had to stand completely still as a classmate circled me, capturing pictures of me of all angles. It took a few tries to perfect because my height made it hard for people to reach overtop of me and so my scans kept having holes at the top of my head, but eventually I got a scan that captured a perfect shape of me, not missing any areas or details, although the colors were not great.

The Monocle Structure Scanner application captured a series of images that configure into an .OBJ file, of which I Airdropped to my computer. Once on my computer, I used Tinkercad to increase the measurements to 42.0 x 53.0 x 24.0 mm and make other adjustments including adding a block to the bottom of the bust to give it a stronger base and a hole at the bottom to get rid of the extra pieces. From Tinkercad, I then exported the file as an .stl and opened it into Shapr3D where I adjusted the layer height to 0.5mm, infill density to 20%, and the plate adhesion to raft.

The process of creating the 3D scan took some work and a fair amount of trial and error, while putting it in Tinkercad, Shapr3D, and then finally printing the 3D bust was pretty simple once I realized what I needed to do to make it print in the best way possible.

Unfortunately, I unknowingly printed my 3D bust on a broken printer, so the back half of my 3D printed bust is very stringy and disorderly, and the front seems like the adhesion was messed up too. Because of this, I would say that my 3D printed bust did not come out as great as I hoped; overall the bust is very chaotic looking and the integrity of the design did not carry over. No amount of filing would help the look of this print because the filament is not connected, so it would all fall apart more than it already is.

3D Scan within Monocle Structure Scanner

3D Bust in Tinkercad

Jenna’s Self Expression

Research and Concept

Throughout this pandemic, my grandmother has been someone I have endlessly been thinking about. We have not seen each other in over a year, so calling each other on the phone is something that I have really prioritized doing each day, since she has not been able to go out much or see anyone other than my grandfather in a very long time. We tend to talk about anything and everything, including the annoying amount of medication she has to take each day. As I was coming up with an object that could use a bit of playfulness, I thought of making something I could give to my grandmother. Although a pill organizer isn’t the “coolest” of objects, I figured that it would be something that would remind her of me as she uses it every day. A pill organizers function is to help people organize which pills they need to take on each day. My grandma tends to fill her pill organizer on Sunday nights to prepare for the week. Because she needs to take different pills on different days, her pill organizer allows her to sort out her week of medications once a week and not have to look up everything she needs to take every single day.

I have found it a trend that “playful” objects often include a connection to an animal, so I tried to think of animals that have scales or some type of polygon shape on them that I could use to be the compartments of a pill organizer. I landed on the idea of using a turtle for my playful twist on a pill organizer because I thought the scutes on the turtle’s shell would work perfectly for this function of organizing pills. Seven of the turtles scutes will open up, one for each day of the week, and that is where the pills for the day can be stored. I believe this would be a playful and interesting twist to an object that is otherwise boring-looking and definitely not-so-fun of a thing to use.

Sketches

Iterations

First Iteration

My first iterations did not go how I had originally planned; I spent hours on Shapr 3D attempting to create a turtle figure with its back having compartments for the pills to go, but the integrity of my design was lacking. I compromised the integrity in order to make the design more like how I pictured it in my head, which is obvious by looking at my first prints. Unfortunately, the hexagonal shapes on the turtle’s back, which were meant to be compartments, had holes in them throughout that were not visible on Shapr 3D. I am out of town this week so a fellow classmate graciously printed my design out for me, so I figured that the best way to share that with her would be on Tinkercad where she could look up my profile and find my design to print. When I exported my design from Shapr 3D to Tinkercad, the low-quality export hurt the quality on Tinkercad, and thus hurting the quality of the print. Since I am out of town, I could not print a second time to make any changes once I saw what was wrong with my first print, but I am eager to print this again and redesign a better foundation for this object.

Below is the original design on Shapr 3D.

Second Iteration

For my second iteration, I felt that I had nearly landed on my final product on the dot. I created a new design on Shapr 3D from scratch, in which I changed quite a few things. Firstly, I made an oval shape and pulled it up to create a one-inch high body. From there, I used the spline tool to make the scutes on the turtles back into more realistic shapes, rather than hexagons as I did with my first print. I made seven scutes larger than the others on the sides for those to be the holes for each day of the week in which pills can be stored. Once I lowered those seven scutes, I added the fins and the head and made the entire model a united body in order for them to be connected. I purposefully made the fins different shapes because when using a reference picture for the design, I saw that these were aspects of turtles that are fairly unique and I wanted to make the turtle more realistic. I rounded out the top and bottom edges of the head so that it looked more like a real rounded head that a turtle has, but would still be stable and not be susceptible to breaking off. Overall, I thought this design was great and I loved the way it printed, however what I found was that the size of the holes were fairly small which would make it difficult to stick your finger in and grab things out of, so I wanted to make that adjustment.

Below is the design for my second iteration on Shapr 3D.

Final Print and Reflection

For my final print, I decided that I wanted to take the same design as my second iteration, but put it at 120% scale. This larger print would allow for an easier experience when someone is trying to stick their finger in the holes and fetch out the pills that they put in. The higher scale worked perfectly and I love the way that the final print turned out. The integrity of the design was still perfectly intact, and now the functionality has been raised. As final touches, I spray painted the turtle a beautiful light green color and added glue dots to the bottom; the light green spray paint was used because I loved how my second iteration was printed with green filament, and I wanted my final product to be green as well to emulate the green color that turtles are well-known as having. The glue dots were added so that the print could hold sturdy on a surface, because without it, the slippery plastic filament texture would slide all over other hard surfaces it is placed on. Also, since the holes do not have caps to cover them, the glue dots take the place of ensuring that the pills placed inside of them do not fall out, as the design will remain stable on the surface it’s placed on. I am extremely happy with how this design turned out and I believe that it serves its intended purpose and does a great job of adding a bit of whimsicalness to the otherwise boring object of a pill organizer.

The process of making this final design was quite stress-inducing in the beginning stages. The idea of actually trying to make this design come to life made me wish I had chosen something easier to create, but I needed to stick with it. My first design was quite the eye-opener in the sense that I had found creating the original turtle design to be super challenging, and then when it didn’t print the way it was pictured on my Shapr 3D screen I felt even more defeated. After doing two of the tutorials to create other objects on Shapr 3D, I then learned other tools that made me want to start my design from scratch, so that is what I did. Going in with a bit more pessimism than I did when designing my first design, I started creating this brand new design with caution. To my surprise, my second design was created with much more ease than the first one (who knew that actually learning the tools of a program would help?!). Once this second iteration was printed, I was ecstatic that the only change I wished to make was for it to be bigger. I was so enthusiastic about this print that I wanted to go the extra mile and spray paint it and add glue dots to make it look how I imagined it in a perfect world, and it did exactly that. This is my final product because it turned out to be fully functional, whimsical, and overall simply a fun design. Now, after having been through all the ups and downs of emotions with Shapr 3D, I can actually say that I find the program to be quite fun to work with and I really enjoyed it, and I am really proud of my print.

My design for my print on Shapr 3D can be seen above under my second iteration, because the only thing I changed was the scale. Below is my final design on Tinkercad.

3D SVG

When thinking of something to make on Illustrator to later upload to Tinkercad, I wanted to keep the design simple while still creating something I have wanted for a while but could never justify buying. I decided on creating a keychain because it is something I can hardly ever justify buying and I thought the design of a happy face would be cute accessory. To create this design in Adobe Illustrator, I created the circular shapes using the ellipse tool and with the mouth stacked two ovals on top of each other and merged them together, brought it to the front, and subtracted. To make the hole at the top, I also removed the fill and used the “minus front” tool. I then saved my design as an svg file and imported it onto Tinkercad. On Tinkercad I changed the width to 200mm so it would fit my workspace when I uploaded it. Once in Tinkercad, I did not need to make any other adjustments, as the design laid out as I intended it to.

SVG Image in Illustrator

SVG Image in Tinkercad

Jenna Johnson’s Form|Function

F|F Research and Concept

The original Thingiverse object:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:832278/files

The image above is a model of a 3D printed jewelry holder. The purpose of this object is to hold large amounts of necklaces, bracelets, rings, and other kinds of jewelry with its copious amounts of tree branches and it’s bowl at the bottom. Many people keep their jewelry in an unruly fashion: in miscellaneous bowls and on hooks that get too clogged. This model is a solution for the issue of having a disorderly system of storing jewelry, because there are a large amount of tree branches and a bowl at the bottom that can hold all of those pieces. This design is great for almost all kinds of jewelry.

Potential Personalizations/ Improvements

One improvement I wish to make is elongating the trunk size; doing this would allow for longer jewelry, such as longer necklaces, to be hung without cluttering the bottom bowl. The original design has the trunks length at 41.87mm, so I would increase that size to be around 50mm. The other adjustment I would make would be to lengthen the branch sizes in order for them to be able to hold more pieces of jewelry per branch. Both of these adjustments would allow for more jewelry and more kinds of jewelry to be stored on it.


F|F Iterations

The Creator of the 3D Tree Jewelry Holder is Rui Costa e Silva.

Below are my first iterations on Tinkercad and the print

When I printed the original design, I thought the quality of the design turned out great; the branches were not flimsy, the bowl at the bottom was sturdy, and it looked very nice. The only issue I had with the original design was that it was small and short, so I could not hang bracelets from the branches, only rings. In this first iteration, I wanted to try to solve this issue I was having with the original design. I extended the top of the tree from 83.75 mm to 98.00 mm in Tinkercad. When I did that, it made the printing process go from ~3 hours to ~13 hours, so I decided to change the layer height to .3 to bring down the time to 4 hours of printing time. What worked about my iteration was the height adjustment I made as it successfully held larger pieces of jewelry that the original print could not hold. What did not work and what I learned from printing this iteration was that with the taller branches needed to come a larger bowl, as the bowl is the base for the tree and it seemed off balance. In my next print I will handle this issue by increasing the length and width of the bowl. I also learned that changing the layer height to 0.3 took away from the integrity of the print, making it not as pleasing to the eye and also a bit more flimsy.In the future I would maintain that longer printing time in order to uphold the quality of the design. In the end, what is important is the quality of the design, and not as much the length of time it takes to print (so long as there is not a time constraint which there wasn’t in my case).

Below are my second iterations on Tinkercad and the print.

With my second iteration, I wanted to resolve the issue that my first iteration had where the base was not very sturdy so it was easily tipped over. In this iteration, i increased the length of the base bowl from 97.88mm to 106.94mm. In addition, I changed the width from 62.19mm to 68.19mm. I maintained the height that I had for my second iteration, so the new enlarged base effectively stabilizes the taller branches. With my first iteration, I tried to shorten the printing time as much as possible by using an infill density of 20% and a layer height of 0.3, and this led to the print coming out very flimsy. With this second iteration, I set the layer height to 0.2 and the infill density to 40%, and this effectively made the print much more hefty and dense, not easily knocked over. I am very pleased with the iterations I made and believe that it is now a design that works perfectly for the function I wanted to add of being able to hold larger pieces or jewelry. This iteration is the sturdiest of all of my prints (including the original design and my first iteration) and it is also the most pleasing to the eye because of sanding the branches down post-print. Other than sanding, there were no other post-print touch ups because I was satisfied with the beautiful purple color and feeling to the jewelry tree.


Reflection

Overall, my experience with printing this jewelry tree was very exhilarating and interesting. My experience with printing this object began with the first print, where I had taken a design I found on Thingiverse and printed that. It was very exciting getting to see an object on the internet, pressing a few buttons, and then have it appear before my eyes. After seeing and touching the original design with my own eyes and hands, I was then able to figure out what I could change to customize this design for my own functions, which for me included making it bigger in order to hold longer pieces of jewelry. After printing my first iteration, I got the hang of what the actual effects of infill density and layer height really meant, so I was able to adjust those in my second iteration to enhance my prints integrity. In addition, getting to see by holding and using the print itself showed me how the height in my first iteration affected the sturdiness of the jewelry tree, and so I was able to come to the conclusion of lengthening and widening the base bowl. Overall, this project made me feel more confident in my ability to use Tinkercad and understand the aspects of a 3D printed design that increase its integrity. I am excited to continue on my 3D printing journey and learn more and more about this incredible invention.

Below is a link to my Tree Jewelry Holder on Thingiverse:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4780280

Jenna’s First 3D Print

This Tuesday, I had the opportunity to use and create something with a 3D printer for the first time. I chose to print the JMU cube because it seemed like a cute first 3D print and like something I would keep on my desk. The experience was not like how I imagined it to be; prior to seeing these printers, I had thought all 3D printers would be massive machines that would be extremely expensive. I now know that 3D printers are in fact quite small and inexpensive enough for people to have one of their own in their houses. Luckily, I did not run into any trouble my first time printing; everything went smoothly and the most I had to do was decrease the density before starting in order to reduce the printing time. My print lasted 1 hour and 36 minutes, which was much longer than I thought it would be for such a small trinket I was printing. I am very happy with how it turned out, and I have already put it to use by storing gift cards in it and keeping it on my desk!

Hi, I’m Jenna Johnson

Hi my name is Jenna Johnson and I am an Interactive Design concentration in the School of Media Arts and Design with a minor in music industry. I am from Ellicott City, Maryland and live there with my Dad, Mom, and younger sister. I have been a dancer my entire life (I even began at JMU as a dance major) and I am on the contemporary team in the Madison Dance Club. I am also very passionate about music and my dream job is to work somewhere in the music business. In addition to dance and music, another one of my hobbies is hiking and adventuring. I love learning about and seeing the world around me, which relates to why I am excited to take this 3D printing class; I see this class as an opportunity to learn a special skill that I otherwise would not have the opportunity to learn.

The object I chose to represent me is a speaker, because music is a large part of my life and I often have the mentality that each playlist I make is the “soundtrack” of my life at that time.

The creative type quiz revealed that I am a Dreamer, someone who is empathetic, deeply emotional, intuitive, idealist, and romantic.

You can find me on:

johns6je on Tinkercad- https://www.tinkercad.com/users/9DZnsygwqwd-johns6je

johns6je on Thingiverse- https://www.thingiverse.com/johns6je/designs