Whale Shark
I have worked very hard internally and externally in life to get to a point where I truly believe that I can be great at anything that I set my mind to.
Through this project, I learned that I was wrong.
As a scuba diver, whale sharks have always been a personal favorite of mine. I got to see one when I did my advanced open water certification and remembered being mesmerized. They are hands down my favorite endangered species and I love that they are gentle peaceful filter feeders that live over 100 years. There is something very spiritual about them.
They are also the world's largest fish.
I was 3D printing a whale shark model to use as a decoration. I took inspiration from the 3D rig of the .stl file to use in a sectional design.
I got an email from the idm soft lab saying that they had a recycling/scrap fabric bucket and so I decided I wanted to do this entire project on recycled fabric.
The fabrics I found were: a cotton blend fabric, a tablecloth, a reflective fleece (this reminded me of the actual skin of a whale shark that I could not touch due to the oils in our hands), something from a beige crotched item, a silver plastic of sorts, a nyu graduation tie, neoprene (like scuba suits) and black breathable nylon.
I drew out each section on paper and used it to trace cut the fabric around. This was stupid because both the paper and fabric was floppy. I should have used cardboard.
Once I had all the sections cut, I reused and stuffed all the scrap paper inside each section to give it some volume. Then I stapled it shut because it turns out I had thread but no needle.
Since I had thread and no needle I used old hair ties that were about to be thrown out to tie the sections together.
Lastly, my idea did not go as planned for the dorsal fins as they wouldn't stand up so I ended up having to use cardboard from my amazon packages.
