62 Artist Collaboration: #LayerBreaker on AsyncArt
Layer breaker is a 62 artist collaboration on async.art. Each artist contributed 3 layers and have generated a resulting artwork that can have as many as 293 quatttuor-decillion (45 zeros) combinations.
I read Ryan Haigh’s post about his collaboration on tile 52, and I thought I would write up a post on my own.
Universal Message
I am the type of person that derives meaning from numbers and colors so the color on tile 10 and the number is extremely important for me.
The color yellow in the chakra system is designated for the solar plexus and is tied to ones self-esteem, and personal responsibility. I believe this also speaks to ones purpose or life calling.
The number 10 is important to me because it is my birth month (October baby!) and in numerology there is an incredible sense of individuality while connected to the whole.
Even before I get into how I made my art, you can see how all sorts of bells and whistles were going off in my head when I was randomly assigned yellow and 10.
Process
I had been teaching 3d print design at a middle school, where I ate, breathed, and slept Tinkercad day and night. There were several designs I’ve done in that program to inspire students to be excited about design.
I knew of a limitation in Tinkercad where exporting a design then trying to work with the same design in Blender resulted in nightmarish scenarios. While I have moved away from using Blender in favor of p5js for my generative projects, this Async Art submission is kind of a nod to 2020–2021 where I spent hours on Blender to experiment and make NFTs.
Here is one example. I take two diamonds and stack the flat sides together. I then import this into blender to see something went wrong along the way.
So Blender, while it is powerful, has shortcomings when working with interesting geometries. I made 3 layers using this technique, and while some experiments were to difficult to fix, the layers I settled on had the right amount of complexity and simplicity that I could compensate for.
Here is an image that I enjoyed making, but wasn’t selected for the final three layers.
Material / Shaders
The reason I focused on glass, was because I have made glass pumpkins and cups in my free time. I also love the symbolism and paradox of glass.
It symbolizes truth and honesty. WYSIWYG in physical form. But for this powerful attribute it comes at a cost. If it falls it shatters into small pieces that are now dangerous to pick up. I have cleaned up so many shards of glass due to kids dropping glass items or being a parent up all night with my kid and having an accident while pouring water.
Despite all of this, there is still an affinity to glass in my household, and I’ll show you how I use Blender to give the glass material a feel I thought would work when being paired with other artworks.
I got in the habit of using boxes for individual designs, and I carried that forward here. The setup places the subject in the center of the box, then I use two lights to reflect and create shadows.
Getting the glass texture is done by getting a glass shader and setting it to the right IOR (index of refraction).
I typically preferred seeing smooth glass. I will show you some alternates to demonstrate experiments that play with the texture.
AsyncArt is an amazing platform because it’s application of layers and states allows NFTs to be more alive and mirror the seasons seen in nature or the states of water that are dependent on temperature.
Check out my layers here.
MightyMoose arranged this collaboration and AsyncArt made some interesting technological upgrades to facilitate a collab of this size. Not only can the entire layer breaker be bid on in an auction, but individual tiles can also be bid on.
Check out the project here.
Seeing the art come together one tile at a time was truly a sight to see! There are many artists who give the final artwork quirky, peaceful, fun, and human vibes that you need to see for yourself.
