beginning with building blocks

 Assignment Number One: Castle

Sometimes it's hard to think innovatively when the prompt is something as iconic as 'CASTLE'.  I had ideas of what tools I was interested to work with - extending out shapes vertically and lofting and capping them to make solids.  The 'grid snap' was appealing as it caters to my rectilinear tendencies.  The reality of how I worked through the project however was much different.  

view one:  the front door (shaded)

view two: side view showing tumble stack (shaded)

view three and four - top view (left) and rear door (right) (pen render)

On the following day I sat down with my five year old daughter and we played together with her building blocks.  The results led me to my solution.  I worked without the grid-snap.  I made cubes and boxes out of the solid tool (rather than lofting the forms).  I relied heavily on the gumball tool to place the blocks in place.  This castle was imagined as an archaic form of haphazard safety.  

I had ambitions to build out surface patterns and textures similar to building blocks we played with and recognized early that it was a bit out of my reach at this time.  I do enjoy the overall appearance, but upon closer examination you would notice the places where true physics have been ignored and blocks are resting precariously or not at all.