FreeFormFab

Nurturing the Inner Entrepreneur

Do you want to be a designer? I’m not talking about signing up for design school, but about having a say in the design of some of the things you use every day. You needn’t design them from scratch, though that could be an option; but you might like to choose the colors, or change their size and shape.

Source and more: New York Times

What does ARC 3D Webservice do?

The ARC 3D Webservice allows you to transform your images into 3D models automatically. You only need a digital camera, a PC and access to the Internet.

Everybody can now make pictures in 3D, with a regular photo camera and the free ARC 3D website. You only have to take a number of pictures from an object from different angles, load it onto the website and you will be notified when you can pick up the 3D photo from the ARC 3D ftp-site. With the ARC 3D model viewer you can generate your 3D model, ready for viewing on the internet. For this you need to save it as a vrml or x3d file and download a 3D viewer from the internet for viewing in a webbrowser. You can also save the model in other higher quality formats. The free MeshLab software provides professional tools to enable you to refine and enhance your 3D model.

Source: KU Leuven

Three D: Graphic Spaces

Three D: Graphic Spaces highlights a current trend in international graphic design: more and more visual designers are staging their compositions as three-dimensional scenarios, in order to turn them into posters, magazine covers, web sites, and animated films. The result is a host of suggestive new pictorial worlds that range from playfully arranged still lifes to room-filling installations. Edited by Gerrit Terstiege, editor-in-chief of the European design magazine Form, and designed by the prizewinning German studio Pixelgarten, this book offers an inspiring look at the various modeling techniques and means of expression involved.

Three D: Graphic Spaces, edited by Gerrit Terstiege, includes a design-historical essay by Steven Heller, an interview of Stefan Sagmeister about his typographical installations and various interviews with graphic designers by Sophia Muckle.

• Three D: Graphic Spaces (Hardcover)
• Editor: Gerrit Terstiege 
• Publisher: Birkhauser Verlag AG (2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3764387718
• ISBN-13: 978-3764387716
• Order by Amazon
• Also see We Make Money Not Art

Resurrecting Leonardo’s Great Lady: A Collaboration

Sculptor Marilène Oliver and cardiothoracic surgeon Francis Wells collaborated to deconstruct Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing The Great Lady in order to reconstruct it as a three-dimensional sculpture. Employing lessons learned from contemporary radiology, they simulated cross sections of The Great Lady that were drawn in pen and ink onto a stack of acrylic sheets.

Here Oliver and Wells give independent accounts of the project, not only sharing how their relationship with Leonardo’s drawing evolved over the course of the project but also exposing the differences in approach by the scientist and the artist to a science-art project.

• Download article (pdf)
• See also article BBC
• See also Wikipedia Leonardo da Vinci

Marilène Oliver: Exhausted Figure (Engraved acrylic and fishing wire. 170 x 55 x 35cm)

Source: Leonardo Magazine

3D Modelling Symposium 2009: Concepts Beyond Geometry

The 3D Modelling Symposium Berlin 2009 will take place from 30 March until 1 April 2009 at the University of the Arts Berlin. The 3-day event is conceived for both professionals and students of the disciplines architecture, industrial design and engineering. There are four modules: Lectures, Case Studies, Master Classes and Workshops. The overall theme is: Concepts Beyond Geometry. Check the preliminary program.

Source: 3D Modelling Symposium