Gabi Burton-Rodriguez: Week 5 Sunglasses

Isometric Drawing

Orthographic Drawings

Ghosted Black With Orthographics

Ghosted Black With Orthographics and Naked Edges

Ghosted Black Folded

Naked Edges (The edges of the lens surface.)

Ghosted Mapped for Keyshot (Folded)

Ghosted Mapped for Keyshot

Isometric Polyshade

Orthographic Polyshade

Folded Polyshade

The concept for Polyshade was to design a fragmented frame that relied heavily on the lens to connect the bridge piece to the arm bands. I chose to use angular lines and faceted shapes to imply speed or energy, as Polyshade is geared towards a more athletic/active market. I then used smooth curves and surface transitions to contradict those angles, and make them more appealing as an accessory. The lens themselves follow the same motion through combining smooth curves with unexpected angles that sit to the outside of the face. For easy storage the Polyshade collapses to be easily slipped over a shirt pocket or thrown in a bag. When open however, the seams are invisible so as to maintain cohesive polygonal shapes along the arm bands. 

To model these sunglasses I began with my crv2view command, creating both lens and the initial reference for the arm bands. I networked my lens surfaces and later went back and added reinforcing arcs to achieve a more subtle concave shape. I tried to build a lot of this model used extruded curves and surfaces. This meant often employing my CreateSolid command. I felt that this was the most effective way to successfully model the bridge piece, the polygonal element on the arm band, and the nose support on the inside of the bridge. I filleted all my edges, but chose to use very fine fillets in some places. I wanted some surfaces to be smooth while others are sharper to tie the overall aesthetic back to my design concept. I also used this model as an opportunity to practice my helix threads, and thus modeled all the chrome hardware elements in full detail. 

Initially I wanted to use very monochromatic colors, strictly blacks and grays. Once importing in the key shot however I chose to introduce a subtle color, one that was fun and energetic, without drawing too much obnoxious attention. For the bridge I used a shiny hard plastic, and employed the same use of shiny hard plastic on the arm bands. For the polygonal elements however I used a softer rough black plastic in conjunction with the other shiny surfaces. I used chrome for all the hinges and screws to make them really pop against the black and to reinforce the industrial sort of design. 

While there are things I might approach differently in the future or things I might go back and alter, I am overall very pleased with the final product and feel that I learned a ton while modeling my Polyshades. I really enjoyed moving away from the use of simple extrusions and Boolean commands on this one and thoroughly enjoyed exploring my capabilities in working strictly from curves and surfaces.