A Stylish Transport Pattern

November 30, 2015 Leave a comment

TrainCarriage_R16_01fiv_800

Although intended as a mid-century rail travel pattern, this particular design has a wide and diverse range of possibilities.

Unfortunately an injury to my arm has meant a return to work that I did some 10 years ago creating designs and patterns using Java programming and the Processing toolkit. This was work that I did with the Open University and which proved, at the time, to be an interesting diversion. But I always wanted to go back and spend more time developing patterns this way and now, it seems, I have the unexpected opportunity so to do.

There have been, over the years, a variety of patterns that use this motif but this one was made deliberately with the intention of using it in the railway carriage set. This set I developed using Cinema 4 and an excellently modelled railway coach purchased from Daz 3D.

On my Flickr page, the link is here, you can also see this image full size along with a tiled image and also this same pattern in blue.

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Where Have All The Patterns Gone?

November 18, 2015 Leave a comment

Patterns are slowly being drained from our rooms as modernism begins to take over the decoration of our houses.

Since the very earliest days of man there has been a desire to decorate with patterns both ourselves and the objects with which we come into contact. In particular there was, and always has been, a conspicuous desire to apply patterns to the contents of the houses in which we live. Why is this? The given answer is that people like patterns to brighten up their rooms.

Modernism is all about long, sweeping contours which contain just colour and perhaps an almost invisible texture. The modernist houses in which we live really are the boxes referred to in the 1960s but it has to be said that these rooms and houses have a beauty and charm all of their own.

Looking at some modern houses recently I began to wonder what the occupants of those rooms would think of them six months or a year after they had moved in. I wonder if they would find them beginning to look pale and uninteresting and whether the solid contours of colour would look uninspiring.

I decided to create a simple modern apartment and experiment with the use of pattern. My experiment was a simple one, in one apartment there is a lack of pattern while in the other most of the surfaces are patterned but with simple, everyday and not too conspicuous patterning. I have also tried to make the patterns look as though they could be from any period rather than mid-century.

It is interesting to compare the look of the two apartments and perhaps to think about the use of patterns in interior design. For our part at 20th Century 3D, we are obsessed with patterns but even we can see the use and beauty of objects which are simply decorated with colour.

You can also see larger versions of this and our other work on our Flickr page which is here.

Filed under Interior Textures, Misc

Mid-Century Living Room Wallpaper

November 16, 2015 Leave a comment

Mid-century inspired wallpaper Ai282_01_mosaic_800

Having done some work to, I hope, improve the look of the mid-century living room, I decided it was time to invent a suitable design for a mid-century wall covering.

Wallpapers like this have, so far as I can see, more or less disappeared but they were a very strong feature in mid-century living rooms. Quite where they came from and the idea behind their design appears lost now although, as you can see from the image above, they were a very useful and interesting way of decorating the walls. I have chosen to use a relatively large-scale since I think that this looks better where the smaller scale tended to break the wall up too much and look too ‘bitty’.

As you can also see, I have made some slight alterations to the living room since there were one or two features that I personally did not like, and I have also improved the lighting to make it look more as though there is a central light illuminating the room.

The curtains are a procedural texture and I have simply changed this to a different one provided by Maxon and, after some discussion amongst ourselves, we have changed the colour from brown to pink. The design was created in Adobe Illustrator while Cinema 4D was used with our living room set to produce the render. There was some slight post-production colour alteration but nothing more was necessary.

You can also see larger versions of this and our other work on our Flickr page which is here.

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1970s Style Living Room Wallpaper

November 13, 2015 Leave a comment

1970s wallpaper

To be honest much of what is referred to as 1960s style is, in fact, a product of the next generation, the wonderful (and colourful) 1970s.

In a way the 1960s was the testing ground for many of the designs that became iconic in the early years of the 1970s when more or less anything was possible.

This is intended to resemble the sort of patterns that you might have found in the early years of the 1970s and, to reinforce this, I have used a 1970s style living room. Created in Cinema 4D, this room is based on the type of new building that would have been found at that time.

I have to admit that, looking at other designs of the period, I quite like the 1970s and it is, for no particular reason, a decade that I have somewhat neglected and so I may have a look at other 70s style designs.

I have shown just the swatch above but you can also see a full-size version of the room and larger versions of this and our other work on our Flickr page which is here.

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An Adaptable Pattern Ai279

November 12, 2015 Leave a comment

Ai279_01_mosaic_800
One of the things that we do at 20th century 3D is to create the more unusual patterns, for example patterns for crockery.
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This pattern began life as a pattern for a plate but as soon as we saw it we realised that it would make an excellent general purpose, mid-century inspired design. Although it looks quite modern in its inspiration, it uses colours sourced from mid-century designs along with a simple motif that has been used up and down the years. It is surprising that so simple a design can produce a pattern which looks so good.

You can also see larger versions of this and our other work on our Flickr page which is here.

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New Background Test Ai277

November 11, 2015 Leave a comment

Ai277_01_mosaic01_800

Rather than just creating patterns for textiles and wall-covering, we also create (and began by creating) textures for use in 3D modelling program.

For this reason we usually try and use a background that is a texture rather than a plain coloured rectangle or square since we’re probably going to use it in a 3D setting. Obviously the visibility of the texture depends on how much we have zoomed out to create the pattern that you see.

Some time back we began creating a variety of 2D textures using Filter Forge to give them a look that resembled a random type fabric. These were created a long time ago and we began to realise some time back that we really had to create some new swatches that were perhaps a little better looking and a little larger. We have therefore created some new textures in a range of mid-century colours which we can use as background. The image above is a swatch that contains one of the new backgrounds at two levels of zoom and is simply there to allow us to see how it looks both posted here and on Flickr.

The background image was created in Filter Forge using the SoftCotton filter by DarknessDesign.

You can also see larger versions of this and our other work on our Flickr page which is here.

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Even More Useful Material – ai276

November 10, 2015 Leave a comment

Mid-century type pattern

Ai276_01_mosaic

This pattern follows on from the design yesterday and is another textile design which has a variety of uses.

Originally intended as a fashion textile, I also considered using it as curtaining material or for cushion covers and then realised that the design has a variety of different uses.

I drew on my knowledge of mid-century textures and patterns in order to create the material, intending it to look as though it had been produced during the early 1960s. The design is shown here as a swatch and also the way that it would look if it was material that had just been bought from the shop.

You can also see larger versions of this and our other work on our Flickr page which is here.

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