New Leaf Turned

 Another fresh green blog post!  Woohoo!

I thought I'd show you this theater work in Sketchup - a (complicated!) 3D model for the old version of that hypnosis show.  Done in a steampunk style, which is rather fun to design!

(This is a not-quite-complete model.)  Note that the central 'droid face was... interesting... to learn to draw.  I have to say that this project is improving my Sketchup skills!

For this particular client the 3D model is essential - 2D drawings just don't communicate well for them.  And, though a physical model would also work, they prefer computer graphics stylistically and, since there have been more changes than with some shows, now, for this job, I prefer CAD too!  It is somewhat easier to modify.  (Mind you, the weird way these CAD models can stretch like taffy while making changes needs a little adjusting to... after the first freakout!)

I did say my Sketchup skills were improving, yes?

Catch Up

There's been lots going on here... just not much blogging.

On the theater front, the set for Fun House Theatre and Film's Stiff is about done.  Due to summertime theatrical kid camps which run onstage all day, followed by, you know, rehearsals, I've been starting my scenic painting at about 9:00 p.m. and painting until midnight.  Last night was, I think, the last of this night-shift.

Theater.  Weird hours.

Meanwhile, in Fort Worth, the carpenters are busy building Stella and Lou.  Since this play is set in a bar, we've been researching cool equipment like beer taps...  Pricier than you'd think!  I went shopping today for burnt orange burlap (okay, an unfashionable bar), and found something pretty close.  Also faux leather for the faux booth upholstery.

I'm also starting the design process for two other shows: Thinner Than Water at Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas and Godspell for OMG Productions in the San Francisco area.  In both cases I've read the text and discussed ideas with the director, but it's Thinner I need to sketch first - like instantly!  I'm letting ideas percolate just a bit longer...

Public Domain image - found HERE with explanation of why it's public domain.

In the Studying Computer Lore campaign, I've now had a couple classes on AutoCAD and am relieved to discover I'm not the slowest student in the class.  (Huge relief.)  In fact, I think I'm going to do fine, if I can only get enough practice time in.  Learning Sketchup is still on my schedule... just a bit back-burnered right now.

Comparing the two programs and their more or less intuitiveness, I think an actual artist/designer type person might have been involved in creating Sketchup.  (Though perhaps an insane artist, who didn't want to do what I want to do with it.)  But I am increasingly convinced that computer drafting is a drawing system invented by a computer guy, rather than computing system designed by a drawing guy.  Maddeningly non-intuitive!  Plus lotso memorizing for the shortcuts that are the only way to draw quickly.  Well, quickER.

Monsterpiece Theater

I just saw this great little Muppet masterpiece and thought you might enjoy it: the Monsterpiece Theater rebuttal to Godot... "Waiting for Elmo."  HERE

What else has been going on?

Well, Fun House's brilliant version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is over... hope you caught it.  A great experience.  Gidion's Knot at Kitchen Dog was struck this last weekend - it took 30 times as much time to strike all that classroom set dressing as it did to strike the two walls!  Venus in Fur is now open at WaterTower Theater and The Other Place is about to open at Circle Theatre in Fort Worth.  

Now for me theater design is just simmering, while architectural things are boiling.  I've been very busy with continuing ed sort of stuff.  First came the yearly ADA seminar (that's the Americans with Disabilities Act), which is always amazingly persnickety.  Don't get me wrong, I'm entirely for the goal of removing architectural barriers... but is it really sensible that the government mandate emergency flasher alarms and roll-in showers for all those deaf, wheelchair-bound firefighters?  Or that the rule is that, if a company's breakroom has no stovetop or oven and only a countertop microwave then that food prep area need not be wheelchair accessible (i.e. kneespace at sinks, limited reach ranges etc.) but if that microwave is built-in then it MUST all be accessible?  ADA rules are filled with such logical... idiosyncrasies.

Also a front burner project for me right now is learning to use Sketchup - a very cool, free, 3D modeling program (with its own amusing idiosyncrasies).  I'm researching CAD classes too, as it seems time to improve those skills.

3D Sketchup model of Circle Theatre: non-commercial, self educational use!

Here you can see my first ever 3D CAD (computer aided design/drafting right?) project, a little Sketchup model of Circle Theater's stage.  Those fat tubular columns at the corners gave me an extra tool to play with.  Just don't look too close at the klutzy construction, huh?  I've since started a much more complex model of  a hypothetical architectural project which also has cylinders - tilted at weird angles, sloping surfaces, cut-in windows....  And I'd thought making this little stage was a bit of a monster!

But I can see that, once I get practiced enough with it, Sketchup is going to be rather fun.

So...  Think AutoCAD is going to be a real hoot then?

End of an Architectural Era

One architect I know, who started out in the 1980s at the very end of the era of hand-drafting, just yesterday cleared out his office desk drawer: home went the drafting lead holders, the lead pointer, the French curves, the circle and bathroom fixture templates, and all the triangles but one.

He hadn't used them in the last fifteen years.

He needed the drawer space.

Computer drafting is a cool invention with a lot of capabilities that can't be matched by drawing on paper, especially as 3D systems like Revit become the newest standard, but it is nostalgically sad to see the retirement of a hand skill that has existed more or less unchanged since Imhotep sketched up the world's first pyramid.

The architect/doctor/god Imhotep, public domain photo courtesy of Wikipedia

For those Readers in the DFW area, the Kimbell Art Museum has an even more beautiful statue of an almost-as-ancient architect/god, Senmut.  Worth a visit.

Personally, I think it's cool that my profession has actual, official gods.  I mean, shouldn't every job?  Or at least a patron saint, as St. Clare is for television.  (She was sick in bed and had to miss Mass, but saw visions... like wifi TV evangelism, but without the technology.)  But who is the patron saint or god of theater set design?  I'm going to have to mull over that...