Early on in the semester I was in the shop talking with Scott, who started talking to me about a 3D Digital Modeling program he’d used to design several structures. This program is called Google Sketch Up, and it’s a very simple to use click-and-drag building program that is also completely free. I downloaded the program and then spent a few hours playing around with it.
The first real intensive design work I did with the program was in designing my set for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, where I started by building a model of the drama theatre, and then went on to design my set inside of the model. This gave me a chance to get an idea of what my physical bristol board model would look like.
Doing this made building my model so much easier. I wasn’t simply adding pieces here and there and seeing what worked, cutting out each piece and gluing it. I had already figured out what I wanted to do.
This also helped me later in the semester after I had my hand surgery. Because I was unable to use my right hand completely, I did a rough design of a possible set for “The America Play”, this time not just building the playing space but also using another benefit of the program. There are thousands of prebuilt elements that can be simply downloaded and added into the model.
and while this set would ultimately go through several more revisions, being able to find elements that worked and did not was also very helpful.