Objectified Clock

 

Hello world again,

This is the example I saved from the movie "Objectified". It was pulled from the section of the movie where they are talking about how every object in our life is designed, even more so if it doesn't appear to be. Unfortunately, the designer of this clock was not named in the documentary.

I liked this clock. I liked how it seemed very simple but it would be kind of hard to re-create because of the circle of hourly markers and rounded edges. These things look simple and soften the clock, but in fact will probably be hard to align based on what I learned from TinkerCad.

I ended up sketching this out on an iPad as opposed to a computer since we didn't have a mouse for the PC laptop at home. I started off making the main shape and the indentation of the clock face. I pulled some rounded shapes as I was figuring out how to make the rounded corners happen.

I started placing the hourly markers next. As expected, it was difficult to get them to arrange in an aesthetically pleasing circle. Belatedly, I realized that I could have used the grid on the bottom to help me make sure everything was dimensions for easier aligning (the main form ending on an even number as opposed to odd for example). I can see the limitations of using an iPad in this process because it does make aligning more finicky. Clever use of the Apple Pencil helps.

I started building the components of the clock hands on the side to size them out properly against each other before adding them to the clock. This also kept me from a lot of accidentally tapping on the iPad.

It was satisfying to change the colours and compare the clock to the example.

I ended up finding the perfect obvious shape for the rounded corners and added them in. As thought, this simple step takes a lot long because of how things align. Here's where the iPad has another real disadvantage. It's much more difficult to assign precise degrees to angles or precise lengths to shapes using the keyboard.

In the end, the object turned out pretty good. I think I want to get graph paper to help me figure out dimensions in a more exact way next time I have to recreate an object. In the screenshot, I gauged how big things were relative to each other, but it would have been better to sketch these numbers out on paper to help me when I'm modeling.

So far so good. On to the next model!