taking some time to talk about my digital sculpting journey today, and how it has led me to releasing my first collection of 3d objects (this weekend)! this is an adaptation of an x thread that has videos, which i can't post via paragraph.

i began learning 3d in 2023, starting with nomad sculpt, which is a sculpting app for the ipad.

at that time, i had a thesis that after the hype around AI art faded away in the digital art world, 3d might be the next big thing, especially as more people got used to using AR/VR. i became interested in exploring this medium while its intersection with the onchain art world was still somewhat nascent.

i really thought at the time that the apple headset would lead to widespread adoption of AR tools! lol. seems we still aren't there yet.

i started sculpting on my ipad, and was totally hooked. there is an element of tactility there that i really enjoy. it's almost like using clay, except you can undo, and my hands don't get itchy 😂

actually, at first i wanted to explore using text-to-3d and modifying those ai-generated meshes, but i found two things:

1. the ai-generated 3d models at that time still needed a tremendous amount of work, which meant that i really needed to go back and learn 3d from a foundational standpoint

2. sculpting on its own was so fun, and somehow even easy... AI seemed superfluous when i could just make my own models

i was really into AI at the time, incorporating it into most of my work, so that's why i initially approached it from that angle.

i actually even won optimism's we ❤️ the art contest in the 1/1 category pretty early on in my journey! so that definitely encouraged me to keep going. see the full piece here.

anyway, i started making all these objects, but that left me wondering where to put them.

most of my digital art over the years has comprised scenes -- landscapes, scifi worlds, fantasy forests -- containing elements of text. i wanted to learn how to create these scenes, which i had often been using AI for, using 3d.

so i started an online course in 3d environment design.

that was when i delved into blender for the first time. wow, the learning curve is STEEP. but i was really dedicated to doing a little bit every day (slow and steady, that's how we win) and by the end of the course i had produced the below -- still one of my favorite pieces i've ever made!

after garnering an adequate understanding of both nomad and blender, i developed a workflow that integrates both tools. usually i will sculpt the initial object in nomad using my ipad, and then i pull the file into blender where i can perform more mathematical/precise work (like creating sword blades :)) or build scenes.

now to my upcoming collection: it's been in progress for around a year as i started making the pieces and gradually came to the idea of releasing them as a set.

in the beginning, i began making these sharp objects as some kind of personification of internal anger i was dealing with at the time -- since then, it's evolved into something much more playful. it's interesting to me how art helps us to deal with complicated feelings, in many ways to release them and move on.

the pieces comprising "even the devil once had wings" are actually minted as .glb files on base -- they are 3d objects you can interact with, or even experiment with pulling them into other programs or VR environments. i'm really curious as to whether they'll take on new lives of their own once they're out in the world. <3

check it out: https://tinyrainboot.com/even-the-devil-once-had-wings/

so what's next? i'm continuing to work on pieces that are created using 3d software. i especially want to keep creating scenes, but i do find that my technical knowledge does not always live up to my visions! so i'm planning to start another blender course soon.

aaaand i have some ideas for ways to translate these motifs into IRL objects, but that will take me a bit more time! hope you stay tuned to follow this ongoing evolution.

lots of love to all of you who have stuck with me long enough to see this through. (*ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)ᯓᡣ𐭩

xoxo
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