The Starry Night Redesigned - With Moving Parts!

grabcad

“I don't know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream.” – Vincent van GoghThe Starry Night is among the most famous and recognized paintings in the world, and is regarded as one of Vincent van Gogh’s finest works of art. It features a dramatic and frenetic night sky, dancing with colours and light cast out by various stars, a stark crescent moon, and the radiating planet, Venus. The winds and sky are painted with short, controlled brushstrokes, with several eddies and flow patterns, that highlight an understanding of fluid dynamics and turbulent flow far beyond the knowledge of scientists and physicists of the time. Van Gogh also uses the phenomenon of luminance to create an effect of movement in the sky, by melding the light of the heavenly bodies into the mellow waves of the tranquil night sky. The hectic night sky is crisply juxtaposed with a placid village scene below, featuring a small town with a tall church chapel tower, gently rolling hills, and an expansive wheat field. Finally, at the forefront of the painting there are cypress trees that many take to be a symbol of human striving, as they reach from the bottom of the painting up to the heavens, while others see the cypress trees as a metaphor for death or longing.For the Extreme Redesign: Art Challenge, I set out to redesign one of the most renowned paintings in existence. My goal was to take the effects of luminance, turbulence, flow patterns, and dynamics that van Gogh had used in the painting and expand on them by making the painting actually move! To accomplish this, I sectioned off the sky into three distinct layers, separated using the colours and flow patterns from the original painting, and then used gears to capture the motions of the light and wind as they streak across the painting. The gears on all three ‘sky layers’ are driven by a single crank shaft, with a total of 21 gears in the assembly. To add more depth and sharply contrast the peaceful town from the vibrant sky above, I printed the town and hills on a different layer, with different heights for each hill and building for a more distinct shape as the proximity to the foreground of the picture increases. The cypress trees are the final layer, spanning across all three of the sky layers, as well as the mountain/town layer, which adds a great perspective of depth and scale to the final picture. Finally, I also printed a frame to hide the gears and to add definition to the piece. I based my frame on ...