Personal Project: Craftsman Cliff House 2003

 My Personal Project of the Craftsman Cliff House seen from the view side.

 A close up on the bridge connecting the main home with the garage guest house. I imagine a "falling water-esque' river could run under this bridge with a waterfall water feature i on the property.

 An upshot on the Tower in the Cliff Craftsman Home.

 Here I fleshed out the bridge from the main home into the lower floor of the two story library in the middle of the Tower.

 A Bird's Eye overhead view of the home I designed. Note the three story garage with an addition space below the cars for a shop in the basement.

 From the street side it looks like a standard bungalow, but the change in elevation over the cliff is deceiving to the height of the tower out back.

 A view from the back showing off all three main buildings connected by the two covered bridge walkways connecting them all up.

Personal Project

Craftsman Styled Cliff House 2003

Today's post is a design for a Craftsman styled cliff house that I have tinkered with over a decade on and off. I have not done any active design for 7 years, but I thought I would post these images here as a first posting on this personal work. It is a true Work In Progress as I have mainly blocked in the proportions and shapes and just started to flesh out the beam work, as the design lacks, doors, windows, and and porch or siding as of yet.

I am a nut for the Arts and Crafts movement, and not only follow the Architecture and associated Furniture, Lamps, and tapestry designs, I have incorporated the style into many a project seen here. This is a dream home of sorts for me, that I would love to build someday up in the mountains of Colorado where I grew up.

The base design is what is termed an Airplane Bungalow, in which the top floor is a smaller box on top of the lower floor, so with the big eaves hanging over it, it resembles the proportions of a cockpit on an aircraft fuselage.

I also wanted to add in these bridges to connect the three main buildings, The home, the garage and guest quarters, and the tower. I used the lower flatter Japanese roof pitch typical on the California Bungalow look, on the multiple buildings and walkway roofs in my design.

My favorite feature is the five story tower which houses a studio loft up top with a 360 view, a two story library below it with an addition office or den under the library with a chapel in the basement.

I may get inspired to revisit this design again, I had fun mocking this Work In Progress up. I have a Craftsman I did while at The Cimarron Group for sale on Turbo Squid here.

Cheers, THOM

3D Stock Model Build Review: Airplane Craftsman Bungalow: Built for online sales 2005.

The Stock 3D Model of an Airplane Bungalow I build nine years ago.

From the back you can see the wrap around front porch with river-rock columns.

 The south side entrance to the craftsman home with the Riverrock fireplace.

A closer shot fo the front porch with door and lighting details.

The 'Airplane like canopy' pop top on this Airplane Bungalow.

 The North side of the virtual Arts and Crafts house.

 Built and grouped for easy texturing.

 All doors and window are grouped and two sided ready for an interior if needed.

 The Pop Top Canopy 2nd floor exploded out to review the parts.

Front door and entry details exploded out to review.

 A close up on the door hardware details on this 3D Stock Model.

3D Stock Model Build Review

Airplane Craftsman Bungalow: Built for online sales 2005.

Client: The Cimarron Group for Stock 3D Model Sales.
Art Director: Myself.
Project Date: March 2005.

In '05 I was still in-house at The Cimarron Group, and I regularly built out highly detailed 3D Models for sale online, and today I am reviewing a 3D model I made of a Arts and Crafts era Airplane bungalow.

I love old architecture as seen in the subject matter of my 3D models I sell online, as well as the catalog of 3D models I built for sale by my prior employer as seen here, of which Craftsman architecture is one of my favorites.

I have built out a few Craftsman Bungalows before, as well as furniture here, and here, Some stock models I sell have been done after this build nine years ago with more attention to detail and scale accuracy much tighter. This one was built out as an exterior only, non quad subdivision model[ primitives etc]. I now sell only full subdivision models online for myself like here and here.

This model is still online for sale by my past employer The Cimarron Group, though they are no longer in business, and can be purchased in the 3DS-max native format here, or exported as a 3DS file for other apps here.

I will continue showcasing many of the stock 3D models I have from various companys I have prepared them for in future posts, so enjoy!

Cheers, THOM

3D Model Sales: Part XII- Craftsman Bungalow 1

A front 3/4 view of the smoothed model I sell online of a small "Box House" from the Craftsman era, here.

This is the base model with all subdivision removed. This is how the FBX, and OBJ exports are saved for the C4D, and Maya users to utilize this product as well.

The North side of the home with the built -in hutch tip out seen protruding.

 With the subdivision removed the base poly build of the porch area.

The back entrance is seen in this 3/4 shot.

The bay window in the dining area floats out over the foundation.

Electric Meter and Power post up thru the roof with flashing and ready to hook up to the virtual city power grid!

 The base Polygon mesh from the back.

Porch details include bead-board ceiling, mission light, solid oak door, and double hung windows.

Here in this elevated shot you can see the slight curl I gave to the roof shingles to help break up a usual flat surface a bit more.

 You can also see the gas meter down on the lower North foundation too in this low-poly shot.

Front view on the home at eye level

  The exploded view showing the parts and groups of the non-smoothed mesh 

3D Model Sales

Part XII
Craftsman Bungalow 1

I sell my 3D models online at Turbosquid, the leading stock 3D model house,  so for todays PART XII[12th], I am showcasing a model I have uploaded for sale of a Craftsman styled California Bungalow.
I love the Arts and Crafts movement, and have built out aa few Craftsman homes, but this is my first full 100% subdivision version with all parts ready to smooth out the the highest level of detail needed.

I  hand built each part and cut out the various section to make this about 50% an X-ray model, so it is good for deconstruction animations as well. The windows are grouped and linked to slide in the double hung frames, as well as the front and back doors being grouped and hinged.


Bead board porch roof, screened basement casement windows and the gas and electric meters all make this model ready to go for your scene.
   

I export all my 3D assets to FBX and OBJ so my friends in Cinema 4D , Maya, and Soft-XSI can use these assets as well.

To view all my 3D models I sell, you can go here. If you want to see a couple of hundred of 3D models I built in the past that my prior employer still sells, you can go here too.

Cheers, THOM

Personal Project Review: Craftsman Hallway 2008

 The Main shot first frame render in this testing Hallway design

 A vintage sepia/black and white shot of the hallway.

This ambient render shows what I built out int his virtual set.

 A close-up on the vintage ceiling fans I built[ also for sale on Turbo Squid by my former employer]

 An ambient render of the ceiling fan. 

NOTE this render hows the artifacts in the blades[ pre- SDS]

 

 A close up on the five-panel doors and vintage glass handled door locks.

 A view of the door handle details in the ambient render material. I beveled every edge in this scene to catch light on the edges.

Personal Project Review

Craftsman Hallway 2008

I built this hallway out for a variety of tests as well as some promotion work while running the in-house 3D Design Department at the Cimarron Group from 2003-2009, and today we will review this little project.

The design itself is patterned after the beautiful Craftsman I woned in Southern California and copied the design details from this 1911 Arts ad Crafts Grand Craftsman Bungalow in this virtual hallway.

I built this virtual set out for a few reasons ,one being a place to showcase the vintage 3D models I sold at Cimarron that are still available online here.

I also used the scene to promote 3D Architectural rendering services to the clients we had at Cimarron as well.

I also used this for my own internal render and lighting tests. I would experiment with render-times, anti-aliasing setting, 3D animations, camera FX, and general lighting practice.

A fun proejct I re-visit to do tests on occasionally still. 

NOTE: 

Posting will be light this week as the Studio is Relocating.

Thank you for your patience.

Cheers, THOM

Project Review: Logo Design for Homes by Farr: PART I

This first pass is always a 2D font picking exercise, with the main looks in both black on white, and white on black to get a general sense of the weight. From this image the craftsman influence came into play as the new direction, so this step , though off base for finish,  helps to pin point that direction.

Upon the direction, I had only one craftsman font installed[ that I owned] so I mocked this up and the direction was right, but we needed a better font.

Mike found a great font and bought it for the project and I developed a few looks and stacking to finalize the process[ a quick one].

 Once I built the 3D Single Point Beveled type for the main logo I did some craftsman gradients as some color tests.

Project Review: 

Logo Designs for Homes by Farr

PART I

Client: Mike Farr Owner Homes by Farr.
Art Direction: Collaboration with Mike and I.
Project Date: Summer 2011.

As a designer, I get the opportunity to help out folks with my design skills, and on certain occasions I get to do this for friends as well. These projects are very different since I know the client, so it is a bit of a change up from the "stranger" type of client who is only a professional contact, and this is 95% of my work.

Today is a posting of PART I, on the Corporate Logo I designed for Mike Farr,owner of, Homes by Farr out of Littleton Colorado, where I grew up. Mike is a fellow woodworker like me [ we both met in wood shop in 9th grade] so for this job, we went with a Craftsman style, a joint love of us both.

Today I cover the original designs in picking the font, as well as the first simple gradient color studys I did for a base direction. 

I plan to post the second part, with final 3D rendered logos used on the business cards and Real Estate Yard signs, as well as the website assets, though you can peek at them here.

Cheers, THOM

Personal Project: Craftsman Playhouse

Full Color Render of the raw wood designed Craftsman Playhouse.

A Second Color Render of the raw wood designed Craftsman Playhouse.

Typical Framing Render from the West Side.

Exploded view of First Floor Walls.

Exploded view 2nd Flooring.

Framing for Loft.

Framing showing electrical in walls before siding.

The Arts and Crafts Playhouse.

I was inspired to design a playhouse for my first daughter based on the design of our own 1910 Craftsman home. I did a full 3D model design of the home to scale and produced all the line drawings using the built-in cartoon shader. It is 8' x 11' with 3' as the front porch.

Sadly the cost to build was prohibitive to actually build it at this point, but someday I hope to. We ended up with an Amish built log cabin which I did a full interior myself and had the design customized to be similar to what I designed here. Link below.

Cheers, THOM

Click Post Title to see the Log Cabin Playhouse I had built where I did the full interior myself.
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