beanchitecture

[beanchitecture]

May 1, 2020

Yesterday morning it was pouring rain. It put me to sleep after a deep conversation about love with a friend of mine (which at some point lead to tears and weeping). Yesterday I watched Hot Fuzz and Guardians of the Galaxy (again) and honestly my butt is getting pretty tired of sitting. At the same time, these movies, for whatever spectacular reason, inspired me to draw faces at the same time as watching them. In a way, it’s kind of comforting but frustrating at the same time, something I have felt before when I used to draw with graphite avidly but know I can cope with. I think I’m starting to delve back into the realm of the hand drawing I oh-so missed and, quite frankly, it nice to know that I’m spending my time on something I actually wrote out I would do this summer (regardless of quarantine). Eating at home has been different and... difficult (but this is honestly nothing new)/ My grandmother is doing alright but her hemoglobin count has dropped significantly again, requiring her to take another hospital visit next Tuesday for a blood transfusion. It feels good to be home and to see everyone again, but at the same time there is a sort of distance in terms of overall interaction with my mom and dad. They are both the same as ever, but I believe my mom is doing worse, always tending to my grandmother and making sure her needs are met fully. Unfortunately, she tends to take her frustrations out on her which is not very kind and she can lose her patience a lot quicker than before. I don’t really think I can be of any help in order to alleviate some of her pressure. My brother and I are straight vibing which is great. Today I decided I was going to compile my favourite videos from the last 12 months of my jolly ol’ life and create an overall recap video of it - crappy craft and all - but I don’t really feel ready to do the editing and watch and rewatch things over and over again. That’s one of the reasons I struggle with videomaking - dealing with frames and frames and frames. But maybe with a bit more experience, big or small, I might feel more comfortable with it as time goes on. I also started piecing together a composition for the graphite drawing I want to start first this summer as a side project. So far, it looks alright, although it always feels like something is missing. There is a lot of negative white space left which I think is what I’m going for but... there’s a sort of emptiness to it. I think that that’s gonna be okay, and maybe for starters I should just begin with something shitty to warm me up. It might not be so bad after all. Last but not least, I miss my friends a lot. Talking over Discord has proven to be a social lifesaver during these trying times. However, I fear that I will have become so estranged to face to face interaction that once it reignites I’ll feel a bit alienated... I’m sure I won’t be the only one to go through this feeling. I think that merely thinking about the lack of physical contact I’ve had over the last month and a half only makes matters worse mentally, so it’s probably best to brush those things off and not panic too much now.

It’s 4:04 am now, and my sleep is certainly not found... yet. But I think that’s it for today. I don’t know who will ever read this crappy blog post, but I’m writing it now because, well, it helps.

[beanchitecture]

Learning a Manifold of Fonts

Machine Learning research from 2014 by Dr Neill Campbell provides an interactive exploration of font forms:

The design and manipulation of typefaces and fonts is an area requiring substantial expertise; it can take many years of study to become a proficient typographer. At the same time, the use of typefaces is ubiquitous; there are many users who, while not experts, would like to be more involved in tweaking or changing existing fonts without suffering the learning curve of professional typography packages.

Given the wealth of fonts that are available today, we would like to exploit the expertise used to produce these fonts, and to enable everyday users to create, explore, and edit fonts. To this end, we build a generative manifold of standard fonts. Every location on the manifold corresponds to a unique and novel typeface, and is obtained by learning a non-linear mapping that intelligently interpolates and extrapolates existing fonts. Using the manifold, we can smoothly interpolate and move between existing fonts. We can also use the manifold as a constraint that makes a variety of new applications possible. For instance, when editing a single character, we can update all the other glyphs in a font simultaneously to keep them compatible with our changes.

Try it out for yourself here

[beanchitecture]

31 1 19 ‘most of all the floor of my folly will likely be the most important surface.’ ‘a happy 10 minute getaway (...) three narrative portions.’ ‘temperature is one of the biggest factors...’ ‘connection through disconnection’ ‘... it’s the same medium. water. the only difference is their state.’

[beanchitecture]

This is what it looks like when I spin while figure skating in my own time at a local rink.

[beanchitecture]

in progress.

Reiteration of site plan. The canal is my site. I still need to annotate this. Beneath it is a primary analysis of my route done on trace paper. The dots and their spacing represent the speed at which I walk down the street and skate along the canal. Finally, a screenshot of my Strava tracking my skate along that segment of my route. It provides information on speed, distance, and elevation. Unfortunately, I lost my phone two weeks ago and do not currently have a device to track my journey with as I did on January 15th. I know I need to 3D model this and it could be interesting.

[beanchitecture]

Something that can be spatial. Sweep, rotate and array away. Form discovered 10 days ago.

[beanchitecture]

[beanchitecture]

R.D 2.3:

Surface... I began by drawing polylines over the map. I manipulated the points on the polylines that show the bridge and the hill of my street. Then I extruded the curves to make a wall for the canal (it looks like an odd basin). I then selected the polylines and used PlanarSrf to create the flat surface. For some reason I had tried to loft some lines together to see what would happen (before I figured out planar surface does the trick) and I can say it looked like complete nonsense.  I used gumball and selected all the road lines to shift them above the level of the canal. So far it was fine... But then I went into top view and tried to close the open edges between the sides of the streets. I completely didn’t realize that top view connects to the 0 on the flat axis, and I had the whole model floating above it. So in perspective, instead of finding a straight line across the width of the street, there are now parabolic lines connecting the edges by dipping down to the plane. In a way it looks kind of interesting and it sure gave me a laugh, but it also frustrated me that I wasn’t able to make a planar surface for the road. I don’t know how to really resolve this. In a way it looks as if the solution may be to treat it as a sweep, set up the proper rails? I need help with this... I really wish I could have experimented more with this... I found it hard to transform something so straight forward into something a bit more complex.

[beanchitecture]

R.D 2.2: A bit of boolean exercising. Boolean split is a trickier one. I have to make sure to select both objects for both of the instructive commands when activating the booleansplit command. Rhino doesn’t actually create the gap between the objects once the split is complete. I need to select the split object and use gumball to drag the piece out and away from the shape made by the overlap. Boolean split works best when the starting shapes are of identical height. It is trickier to understand a boolean split when the heights differ. This command is interesting and could be used to make paths, hallways, etc. I like Boolean Difference best. It’s interesting to use this command on shapes of different heights.

[beanchitecture]

I changed my username to d1b7f0 because it is the hex code for the colour I feel when I am snuggled away inside my bed. Is it normal to be able to feel a certain colour? Something like saying “I feel blue.” According to this website http://chir.ag/projects/name-that-color/#D1B7F0 , the written name for my hex code is Moon Raker. I guess I feel Moon Raker.

[beanchitecture]

R.D 2.1:

Delayed post: *first and foremost I apologize for the lack of consistency in my written format* This screengrab shows what I learned to do in my first tutorial. I described this at the end of R.D 1/2 (1/2 means task 1 and/or 2, an overlap). Again, I really loved discovering that I could draw a continuous polyline from one viewport axis into another. I learned to loft and I think it might just be my favourite tool. I need more practice with the boolean tool!!! It seems like it could be useful in making a super funky staircase. The top row shows a ‘veil’ or ‘curtain’ or ‘fabric’ extruded from a spatial ribbon. The shots following the veil show side, top, and perspective view of the ribbon from which the ribbon is derived. The bottom row shows two views of a loft I created using polylines. I named these ‘blankets’. The first view looks like a little ghost, it’s kind of cute. The third photo on that row is what I called ‘bean city’. I began with a bean shaped line, extruded curve, capped, and repeated with a seperate second shape. Then BOOLEAN UNION!! Boolean union fuses two shapes together. I think I will post an R.D 2.2 on practicing boolean. The last shot is a sweep 1. Sweeps remind me of lofts but vertical. I can say that the fine line (pun intended) between lofting and sweeping is that loft usually deals with lines parallel to eachother in a way, while sweep requires me to select a rail on which the surface will run, and a relative, usually perpendicular, line as the one to determine the shape. I think I will try more boolean, drape, and sweep right now. Also I find I can’t hold back from always doing curves because they aren’t something I have had the time to study hand drawing them as 3D shapes.

[beanchitecture]

I’ve lost something. And it’s really interesting that, well, I know exactly where I lost it... But it cannot be found. Maybe that’s what an invisible folly is to me... a space that can describe the search for a lost or missing object, memory, or activity... In an attempt to find it, I excavated a good underside portion of a sidewalk snow bank with a spoon. To search for one thing, to find another.

I photographed the cave-like form of the miniscule excavation. This spot happens to be on my site as well. I’m looking forward to importing it to Rhino and attempting to derive a 3D model of something that could be increased to a bigger scale and transformed to look like a shelter of some sort...

Looking forward to warmer days too.

[beanchitecture]

R.D 1/2

[beanchitecture]

the most disgusting bus ride