More Ceramics
Oct. 31st, 2025 09:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soc_puppetI successfully finished all my required objects for my wheel project in Ceramics! (A total of eleven objects, for various reasons, one of them being that we had to make duplicates of everything to manually destroy to simulate losing half of our work in the kiln. (I made a triplicate of one item.))
Anyway, with that done, we're on to our final project for the semester: Slab Houses.
In theory, I love this project. The teacher showed us some examples from previous years, and it has so much potential to be fun and quirky! The assignment is to make a home that tells a story about who or whatever lives in it. We also need two "roof angles" (not two sides of the same roof, as in an upside-down "v", but another roof thing in addition to that).
Unfortunately, the last constraint is killing me: There need to be a minimum of two slabs of 11" x 8.5". Holes can be cut into them, and structures built onto them, but they must otherwise retain those dimensions, because this project is ultimately about building slabs. Oh, and it also can't be more than like, 18" in diameter in any direction.
Idea sketches were due on Wednesday. I had five ideas for slab structures, and ended up finalizing one of the two I was least enthusiastic about because it's easy for the design to follow the "two piece-of-paper-sized slabs" rule.
We had to make models of our idea for a skill builder, due by 4:30pm today, and mine is. Not great. We're allowed to skip a lot of the final embellishments, and mine is still not great. Chiefly because it has a flat roof, and I didn't think through why that was a horrible idea. But it was also literally the only idea that would really work without being too big.
I've since come up with a couple of other ideas out of desperation, but I don't know if I'll be able to switch to one of them at this point. Still, it's gotta be better than my current attempt 😩
Anyway, with that done, we're on to our final project for the semester: Slab Houses.
In theory, I love this project. The teacher showed us some examples from previous years, and it has so much potential to be fun and quirky! The assignment is to make a home that tells a story about who or whatever lives in it. We also need two "roof angles" (not two sides of the same roof, as in an upside-down "v", but another roof thing in addition to that).
Unfortunately, the last constraint is killing me: There need to be a minimum of two slabs of 11" x 8.5". Holes can be cut into them, and structures built onto them, but they must otherwise retain those dimensions, because this project is ultimately about building slabs. Oh, and it also can't be more than like, 18" in diameter in any direction.
Idea sketches were due on Wednesday. I had five ideas for slab structures, and ended up finalizing one of the two I was least enthusiastic about because it's easy for the design to follow the "two piece-of-paper-sized slabs" rule.
We had to make models of our idea for a skill builder, due by 4:30pm today, and mine is. Not great. We're allowed to skip a lot of the final embellishments, and mine is still not great. Chiefly because it has a flat roof, and I didn't think through why that was a horrible idea. But it was also literally the only idea that would really work without being too big.
I've since come up with a couple of other ideas out of desperation, but I don't know if I'll be able to switch to one of them at this point. Still, it's gotta be better than my current attempt 😩
Thoughts
Date: 2025-11-01 04:36 am (UTC)Re: Thoughts
Date: 2025-11-01 04:02 pm (UTC)I drew some festive gourd houses! They would only use one 11x8.5 slab at most. I drew the state's historical capitol building, which I could give to my dad as a Christmas present, since he's really into state history! It would be much too big. I pulled up an adorable Pokémon hut design from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon! Same problem as the gourds.
My initial two ideas were a science lab with an experiment gone wrong, where a tentacled creature had taken over and now basically used it as a shell, and an old CRT computer monitor, inhabited by computer-mice-and/or-bugs. Both of these could use the prescribed slab size, but I wasn't very enthusiastic about either of them. I ended up going with the lab design, since it was easier and ideas were due Wednesday, but honestly? I'm just completely unenthusiastic about it. (Also, the roof is flat, and while I'd have a tentacle sticking out of it that could add support, it's still kind of a headache.)
I came up with a few ideas last night that I like better: An over-turned log where forest critters dwell, a couple of mushroom houses (possibly inhabited by a family of badgers and a single snake), and a very triangular house that uses the slabs as a main roof (though I still need to figure out who lives there). I don't know if I'll be allowed to switch to any of those ideas, though.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2025-11-01 11:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-11-01 07:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-11-01 04:08 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2025-11-03 02:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-11-05 05:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-11-05 05:29 am (UTC)Anyway, good news: All of my pieces survived the bisque firing, and none of them came out misshapen!
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Date: 2025-11-06 10:05 am (UTC)