Spore
Footwear, 2023
Synopsis
This project was initially created for a design challenge. The brief was to design a 3D-printed shoe for the startup footwear company Zellerfeld. There were no guidelines for this challenge aside from being a 3D monoprint. While I did not win, what was initially a 10-day design sprint became an opportunity for me to truly blend art with design unconstrained, as well as strengthen my visual abilities.
I utilized 3 new software to aid my process. Within just a few days I was able to effectively learn Zbrush, Cinema4D, and Redshift. This project isn’t traditional industrial design in the sense of problem-solving and consumer-centrism. This is one of the few moments where I truly designed for myself, and invested unbridled artistry into a body of work.
Letting Nature Breath Inspiration
Drawing inspiration from a fascination of fungi and the concept of overgrowth. Maybe this fascination was emphasized by playing and watching The Last of Us not too long ago. Pulled various images exemplifying the many different shapes and colors fungi exist in. This jump-started my mind and gave me a lot of different visual avenues and references to play off of when designing.
Concept Ideation
Refined sketches exploring different ways mushroom attributes could be executed on footwear. Exploration of many different silhouettes and combinations of features.
3D Development
Blender was used to model the underlying form onto which all the details would be sculpted. Utilized a subdivision workflow constructed around a 3D last provided by Zellerfeld, a startup specializing in mass-production 3D printed shoes.
Sculpting
ZBrush to 3D sculpt all details including the lattice collar, gilled upper, and veil remnant tread.
3D Development
The resulting mesh from ZBrush was converted into gcode using PrusaSlicer. Then exported the toolpath and an OBJ to have a visual model that accurately displayed print lines as raw geometry instead of relying on a displacement texture.
Rendering
All scenes rendered in 4K DCI using Cinema 4D with Redshift. All of the environmental assets are from Quixel Megascans.
Prototype v1
I printed the first version without any modifications or size scaling in PLA filament just to inspect the details and proportions in reality. What I learned from this was that the shape is far too narrow, possibly because the last I used from Zellerfeld is tailored to their sizing algorithm, and not anatomy. The next steps are to adjust the scale/shape around an accurate last for my size in TPU filament and hopefully conduct some wearable tests. Check back here in a couple of months to see where I went with this project.