Andrew Widner Portfolio

Aesthetics of Design has helped me learn a great deal about my own aesthetic and aesthetics in general. Throughout this course, I’ve been able to explore fabrication concepts that I use every day, and do a sort of self-critique on my environmental impact as I use them. Additionally, I learned that I am capable of combining my love for sci fi and the American southwest in a statement piece that I am extremely proud of.

The first project that I made in this class was called “Plastic Forest”, which helped me explore upcycling and as mentioned previously, helped me understand how I can use the waste I generate from 3D printing for artistic and reflective purposes. This project consisted of me delicately removing and collecting organic or “tree” supports from 3D prints and carefully adhering them onto a wooden plaque. This project took a very large amount of time, as getting tree supports to be removed from 3D prints while remaining intact can be quite challenging. For the viewer, this project had the goal of being a contemporary art piece, inspiring the viewer to think about their own plastic waste and a potential dystopian future where trees are dead or completely fossilized from natural disaster.

This project challenged me to be delicate and deliberate. Something that I have noticed about myself throughout my creative endeavors is that I tend to ‘chicken scratch’ or sketch violently to get a desired result. I can often get carried away in quantity or be uncareful when making art. This project required a great deal of delicacy and precision, and I am proud of how I was able to get the result to be as clean as it was. The full documentation for this project can be seen at this link: Plastic Forest – Aesthetics of Design

The other and final project that I made in this class was the Space Cowboy Lamp. From the beginning of this semester, I knew that I wanted to explore the aesthetics that surrounded the American southwest. Whether that be a ‘cowboy’ or a ‘wild west’ aesthetic, I knew that I wanted to explore my fascination of the west. Additionally, I have enjoyed and surrounded myself with sci-fi space content since my youth. A prime example of this enjoyment comes from my hundreds of hours playing the video game Elite: Dangerous. I knew that this semester I wanted to explore how I could combine my existing love of space and sci-fi with my discovery of my love for the American southwest. So, throughout a semester of investigating this aesthetic, I was able to create the Space Cowboy Lamp.

This lamp, combining equal parts CAD, woodworking, 3D printing, and electronics, is a reflection of four years of fabrication learning here at CU I was able to incorporate elements from various sci-fi sources but mostly designs from Elite: Dangerous in addition to elements typically associated with the wild west to create this juxtaposed statement piece. Making this lamp helped me improve upon the mentioned woodworking and electronics skills and helped me continue to develop on my advanced CAD and 3D printing skills. The design phase of making this lamp in both CAD and physically prototyping it required all of my engineering and form factor skills, and challenged me to make sure that I was balancing ease of construction and how complicated and involved I was leaning into the aesthetics. It was also a challenge to ensure that no one aesthetic took over the other, that the lamp was equal parts space and cowboy. Overall, I am very happy with how it turned out. Final documentation can be seen at these links: Post 11: What IS the Space Cowboy Lamp – Aesthetics of Design | Post 12: How the Space Cowboy Lamp was made – Aesthetics of Design

In addition to these physical projects, I was also able to carry my aesthetics explorations into another class, Computer Animation. In this course, I designed a final animation project that would also combine these space and cowboy aesthetics together. In the short animation titled “Reunion”, I used my animation skills to tell a story of a lone pilot who travels far to visit the grave of an old friend. This animation took inspiration from the same sources as this final lamp did, and had I had time, I would have loved to sneak my CAD design for my lamp into this animation as a personal easter egg.

Computer Animation Final – Spring 2025 – “Reunion”

Overall, this course challenged me to define what my own personal aesthetic was, and to learn more about the aesthetics that surround me every day. By making these projects, I was able to reflect on my own personal manufacturing methods as well as understand deeply why I like the things that I like. This class will help me in my career of product design / VFX and has helped me to inform my own design choices going forward.