Hearts in a Blender
Lets talk hearts.
Each month, the Reddit page for Blender holds a themed competition to decide the page's sidebar image for the next month. For the June, 2015 contest an employee of Twitch streaming services took interest in the contest. He offered a $100 prize to the winner of the next competition, provided they stream their process on Twitch. He phrased it as a part of broadening a community of artists streaming on twitch, which sounds pretty cool.
As usual, the previous winner chose the theme, which he described only as “Robot Heart”. It was up to contestants interpret and come up with their own idea for entry. Since I occasionally entered (and lost) these contests anyways, I decided to try for it.
There were obvious ideas that came to mind. Something reminiscent of the "I, Robot" aesthetic. Clean white plastic, silver components and LED lights. Throw in some fuel lines and you are good-to-go.
"Anyone could come with that" also immediately sprang to mind. The voters and sponsor both valued creativity as much as execution.
Maybe more old-school. A clockwork heart? Played out as well. but maybe I could give it a new spin. What if I went further into the future, to robotic beings as complicated as organic life? I noticed a theme then. My ideas were starting to attach themselves to a timeline. I started doodling. I had a month of summer and a week of vacation set away. Could I make a progression of hearts? I did say I was going all out.
I identified 6 periods I could be interested in.
0000 A.D. : Ancient Heart
1850 A.D. : Victorian Heart
1900 A.D. : Industrial Heart
1990 A.D. : Oldschool Heart
2050 A.D. : Robot Heart
4000 A.D. : Silicon Heart
So I got started.
4000 A.D. : Silicon Heart
To begin, I made a human heart model to work off of. Since the Silicon Heart is is based on the idea of an inorganic life-form with the complexity of a human, I started editing the material to be a kind of robotic muscle. I popped on a few veins and red light coming from the arteries and said it was good. And lo.
0000 A.D. : Ancient Heart
A heart made with ancient technology, powered by water wheels, stone simple machines, and held by wood scaffolding. This one was rushed as I had the base done but the whole project ahead of me. Post processing barely saved it. My process was: creating all the objects related to my heart, then placing them from the camera's view to make the shape. That's what I did for most of the other hearts. Water chutes were put in place of major arteries for poetic parallel reasons.
1850 A.D. : Victorian Heart
I didn't let that heart stop me though. A combination of the classic clockwork heart, actual Victorian clocks, and Victorian science equipment. The copper, glass, and rubber reacted beautifully to the lighting. Technically the Victorian and Industrial era were coincidental, but whatever.
1900 A.D. : Industrial Heart
Steam engine, boilers, pistons, and pipes galore. The little models of dials, valves, and pipe corners gave this one a model feel, but once again the lighting shines (ha) (((laugh please))).
1990 A.D. : Oldschool Heart
A heart assembled by some hopeful madman from 80s plastic-coated technology. CCTVs, monitors, transistors, and wires galore. Now I want this to be some AI that snappy 80s FBI agents have to stop from taking over the world.
2050 A.D. : Robot Heart
Aand we've come full circle. I had one night before the contest and decided to do my vision of a quintessential robot heart. The kind Apple might come out with, ya know? The good stuff.
I very unsuccessfully streamed me making some of these to Twitch. Mostly it was me modeling gears and pieces of wood to start cobbling into a heart shape, but apparently it was enough to put me in the running for that crisp Benny Frank (paid by paypal of course). /r/Blender voted me to the top despite me submitting a day before it was due. I won the first ever cash (again, paypal) prize for the monthly challenge. Believe it or not, a poll I set up to decide what heart got to sit in the sidebar, resulted in them picking this last heart, the one I had deemed too obvious at the beggining.
I'm writing this 2 years later, in a new college and a totally different environment, and I still come back to this project sometimes. Its the project I want to be able to do 100% of the time. Come up with 6 different and unique ideas, do all of them, and feel like I've done everything I could to complete the project. Time, motivation, and duty might often get in the way, but I never forget the times I get by with just a couple good ideas and some decent execution.
Thanks for reading,
Micah Wiersma
Process Pictures
