3D Outcome Planning

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  Now that I have a working character design, I have now started planning for my 3D project: wood carved children’s toys. I began with a simple sketch of the toy version of the rabbit, I have chosen the rabbit as it is one of the predominant characters of the story. As my characters have focused on simplistic forms, being composed of simple geometric shapes, I have also utilised basic shapes in creations of my design. However before I finalised my design, I have decided to practice wood whittling and carving so that I would be able to adjust the design before doing the final figure. 

 I have practised wood whittling with pine block cubes that I have mentioned in the post ‘Planning Primary and Secondary Research: Material Resourcing and Scaling pt. 1’, which were attached to different sizes of blocks.



 While pine woods are not known to be best for carving due to their hard nature and knots in the wood fibres, I had not known when I had bought them. I did feel quite a difference when carving; it took much more force to break into the woods and getting stuck mid-carving due to the knots, making pine wood unsuitable for my project.


Attempt at wood carving; too hard to cut through

 I figured that it would be inefficient to spend too much time on a large block like this, so I had settled for making a smaller practice figure for carving practice.



 While the process was much more digestible at a smaller scale, the wood was still unsuitable for my final project. I found that wetting the wood with some water had helped soften it a bit, however this makes the fibre more ‘strand-y’ and therefore damages the wood overall. It may also cause rotting in the future, so this technique will not be used. 



 Above is the finished practice carving. The head part was near impossible to carve due to its hardness, so it was left unfinished to not waste too much time on an unworkable material. I have found that basswoods were better suited for carving due to their softness and much more even grain so I would be looking into getting this material, I have already found some sellers on Amazon as there are no nearby wood block providers (Wood workshop only has wooden boards) for my final project.












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