Never been much into chocolate myself, let alone ever thought of being a chocolateur, but here we are. More precisely, the person who made the meshes for the molds to create some delicious art. Tasted it myself.
As per usual around here, one day I wake up to a message from a friend, colleague and artist – Anete Volkoviča. It was about the creation of some house meshes for her thesis on the rapidly decaying state of some art nouveau buildings in Riga. We had worked together before so I began on modelling as soon as I had shot the reference material.
Getting reference photos wasn’t straightforward. One of the talking points in the thesis for the project was the downright sad state all of these buildings were in – collapse through neglect being a more profitable option than restoration. Things like construction fencing, safety nets and dense cityscape made it a game of getting what shots I could in from the street – rest had to be approximated.
The following weeks went as follows – take person for scale, align to image overlay and put on some music.
The 3D prints served as the intermediary between a virtual mesh and the silicone molds. I did some preventative cleanup to make sure all the slopes can be supported while printing and (mostly) won’t get caught when being removed from the cast. It came out far better than I expected – shoutout to my good friend Jānis Auniņš for handling the print.
Holding the tiny building myself felt like something straight out of Alice in Wonderland. I got genuinely giddy getting to see just how nicely all the little overhangs and window sills stand out.
The bases were done using a CNC – carved out of hard styrofoam and filled with more silicone. As great as Blender is, in this case I resorted to Illustrator for the carving patterns. Very glad I wasn’t the one having to mix the bucketfuls of material that went into the project.
In the last hectic days of the project, as I started to pack away all the files, she was elbows deep in chocolate making sure all the buildings come out intact and refrigerated on the big day.
The defense went well and all the houses melted relievingly on cue. The video that resulted from the diploma exhibit was actually shot after the event, so that’s another four solid chunks of chocolate. Even just getting them up the stairs to the third floor was a workout I wasn’t entirely prepared for.
I took liberty of composing a little ambient background music for the cut that’s shown here, but I handed off the original video with no audio for later use on short-form video platforms – the reason the entire thing is shot in portrait.
Stuff used:
- Canon EOS D500 for capturing, with a 250mm lens and an 10mm lens
- FSpy for reference calculation, Blender for modelling
- Illustrator for CNC patterns
- DaVinci Resolve for editing
- These boots for walking