VIVIENNE TRAN
INFORMATION
Vivienne is currently an undergraduate design student at USC. Her work is often inspired by the so-called mundane, everyday life and passing presences of people around her. She experiments with a multitude of mediums and likes to explore the different forms her works may take. She currently works as the Art & Design Director at the Daily Trojan.
LINKS
Unreal Object Gumball Cat
3D-designed model of an unreal object for DES213 course at USC for the fall 2024 semester. My Unreal Object consists of a “fat cat” model that I found on TurboSquid combined with a gumball machine model that I created. The shape of the fat cat was already a perfect sphere and I knew I wanted to try to put something inside the sphere because of all the empty space. Therefore, I went with the gumball machine idea and in Cinema 4D, modeled the machine part of it while modifying the inside to include gumballs, as well as some modifications to the head and feet to fit the machine. For materials, I chose transparent plastic for the body and head of the fat cat, but kept the ears, tails, and feet a speckled orange pattern that I thought mimicked cat fur well. The eyes and nose are custom hard plastic while the body is a textured plastic that I also custom-modified. The part where the coin is inserted and twisted is metal.
Since my object is not so much a toy, the features that relate to the aesthetics of the specific toy brands are limited. However, I tried to make that up with color choice and the feeling of joy that a consumer might receive. The body of the machine is a common color for gumball machines but there’s a sense of familiarity that children may be attracted to, especially considering the machine is for candy. I think it relates to TOMY the most because it’s not a playing block like Lego or Playmobil and it still holds a toy-like aesthetic with its simple, circular shape. I also tilted the head of the cat to be looking away from a consumer because I thought it was a bit creepy for it to be looking straight at them. When the head is tilted, it has more of an adorable-like charm in my opinion that more people would prefer. Even though I did not change the eye size in the final modeled image, simply tilting the head made the viewing experience better.