Donovan Dynamics
Signed and Titled · Digital sculpture

Broken Form

James Donovan2 min

In July 2012 my head was scanned with a structured-light scanner. It is the scan that Borrowed Crowns finishes. Six weeks later, over one weekend in August, I took it apart.

The weekend

Between 18 and 20 August 2012 I brought the scan into Blender and broke it in two ways. In one, the head turns slowly under a shader of coloured rings, a turntable of 31 frames. In the other, it is cut into horizontal slabs and pulled apart between grey planes, so the face reads only between the gaps.

A grey 3D scan of a man's face, eyes closed, cut into horizontal slabs that are pulled apart between flat grey planes.
The scan in slabs, August 2012.
The scanned head turning slowly under a shader of coloured rings, against a grey background.
The turntable, 31 frames, August 2012.
User Perspective, a three-second render from the same weekend.

The same weekend I started a version that would run in a web browser. It never went past a test.

The print

In February 2017 the scan came back out. I cut the face from it, broke it into fractured relief, and printed it in clear resin. The file is still called broken_form_face.

A face printed in clear resin, eyes closed, its surface broken by stepped cracks and ridges, glowing green in a lit corner.
The face in clear resin, February 2017.

Renders and the print, 2012 and 2017

The clear resin face in teal light, in profile.Two broken head scans drawn as ink-style renders, 2017.The resin face lit magenta from inside.Close-up of shattered scan surfaces in the browser version, 2012.Wireframe topology over the head scan in Blender, 2012.The resin face beside the green-lit LED vase.Ink-line profile render of the fractured scan, 2017.The top of the resin head and its jagged edges.Fragments of shell and skin in the browser version, 2012.The resin face glowing purple, cracks lit from behind.Front ink render of the split face, 2017.The back of the resin head in blue light.The resin face close up under green light.Two broken scan fragments in the browser version, 2012.The resin head and the cyan LED vase side by side.The resin face close up in blue light, cracks catching it.

All 11 in Signed and Titled