Week 9: Written description and three-minute presentation script

Project name: Light ranger

The pattern of shadows brought by light evokes a new character apart from the model itself, helping to communicate different atmosphere. In model making, incorporation of light works as a tool for qualifying and transforming space, which will not only stimulate sight, but also assist to define forms. As the picture shown below, I cut off geometric shapes to make up a gallery walkway in the scale of 1:50, which is quite small, however, with light pouring in, the reflected shadow enlarges the model and generates a dramatically abstract form, bringing more vitality. The contrast highlighted between model itself and the shadow in the backdrop overall communicates a powerful and innovative feeling to viewers.

3 minute presentation according to the slideshow:

-Introduce the 5 models
-Talk about the design process
-Discuss the challenges and successes in model making
-What I learned since Week5

Hi, I’m Megan, in this presentation, I will introduce my five models and look into the design process of each model and explain how they communicate in the site with the help of everyday light. And I will also talk about the challenges and good results I’ve got.

The first model is based on my room interior, there are lots of rectangular elements in my bedroom, so I used cubic cardboards to explore my bedroom space. The challenge is that it’s hard to capture light inside the model, so I adjusted the light direction so that shadow could be reflected in the background. And the final model could somehow show the cleanness and neatness of a modern apartment.

Moving on to my second model, it looks quite organic, and is designed to be an art museum. At first, I cut linear holes on the paper and stick it onto the cardboard to be light filter, however, the shadow couldn’t appear on the ground floor, what I did is adding more columns on the ground floor to create sort of delicate rhythm of the light, which also made the model looks more structural and compelling.

When I’m making model 3, I’ve got better photographing skills to capture changes in light and shadow, learned how to adjust lighting sources to achieve a transitional effect, which created changeable shadows within a small space.

Now let’s focus on my last two models, which show different approaches to get interesting compositions in light and shadow. While model 4 is focused more on how to use different angles of light to display the shadow direction, in model 5, I made a screen to work as a light filter to sort of enhance the viewers’ experiences, which I think is quite successful as when light pouring into the room, there’s a sharp contrast between light and shadow, communicating a warm and quiet atmosphere. 

Now let’s moving on to next part, that is what I’ve learned since week 5, the first thing I wanna talk about is the importance of putting human figures in the model, which could add vitality to the model and generate a sense of scale as well, the wonderful figures that I found on the internet really help me a lot to present the model better.

And I also found great fun when using photoshop to apply materials to my models, which seems to bring the models a brand-new look and present a completely different character apart from the original one.

In conclusion, through these five weeks, I was able to use the limited materials to develop my model making skills and I also learned how to create interesting compositions between light and shadow by shifting the position of the light.