Nandita Chandra

CFP004

UBD23141

The CEPT Foundation Programme studio is an introduction for students fresh out of school to the rigor and work habits required by an undergraduate degree at CEPT University. The studio is conceptualized as a series of sequentially planned exercises, through which students develop skills and abilities, which are then deployed to address increasingly complex problems falling in four broad categories: visualize and draw, make and learn, anayse and interpret and conceptualise and represent. The exercises are designed to provide foundational skills for students across disciplines at CEPT, between which they maintain a balance. They also reflect an understanding that at the foundation level, these skills overlap to a large extent, and a varied array is of benefit to all students. The studio is taught through intensive 1–2 week long modules, focusing on a particular skill or ability, and a process that emphasizes ongoing feedback in addition to expert faculty lectures.

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Imaginative drawing made me delve deeper into my story, 'The War Against The Angels', a basic war between nature and technology set in a dystopian future. It made me interact with the minute emotions of the story and the ways I could represent them using sketches and colours.

Above is the final sketch made using a combination of fountain pen and soft pastels. The idea behind using these two mediums was for fountain pen strokes to stand for the futuristic brutalist architecture and a concrete world which then interacts with the colours of the nature, for example:- the sky.

Varanasi the ancient city of India, has many traditions and rituals that have been passed down from generations. With them are the objects that carry the significance of these rituals. To bring these products that bring our heritage into light I present this study of products we find invariably on the ghats of Varanasi.

The magazine ‘The Bhartiya Touch’ expresses the stories of seven products, their makers, the materials that are used to make them and on which ghats they’re sold and in what form. It also highlights the significance of these products from various aspects which together connect to Varanasi. The magazine is also accessible with the QR code.

The main component of a board game needs to speak for the whole game itself. Taking inspiration from the Catan game board, a hex-grid pattern was decided upon as the basic structure of our board. Hexagonal pathways also helped us to encapsulate the need to increase the number of paths and checkpoints. Using different materials like cardboard, plain paper, and jute paper for experimenting mechanics of the game and colour schemes we finally adopted a coffee stain background with dark brown pathways and bright yellow and red highlights for stop points all hand-painted on canvas. With element positions being represented using specific coloured washers attached to the board.

Designing a board game requires a lot of iterations and sketches alongside a storyline and a basic idea of the mechanism. Above is the process of initial designs to the final components of the game. Different materials, like high gsm papers, mdf boards and acrylic sheet pointer used in the spinner were explored and selected as per the final design language of the game.

Astra, a game based on Varanasi's myths, culture and elements is a well examined game based on strategy and luck. The large amount of times we revisited the mechanics and the graphics of the game gave us an understanding of clearing all the possible loopholes and making it a perfectly assembled game with practical timing and setup.

The schematic representation of the map connects the visitor's immersive experience upon entering the site - a novel environment for them - to our study. The map has a retro theme, inspired by vintage pixelated graphical games. Illustrated details on the map, cover the area of not only the flower park but also the promenade and the Atal bridge to represent the various floral plantations and the various locations across the area with different landscapes. The map illustrates the legend-based expenditure, crowded areas, and the activities that usually occur at those specific spots.

Exploring the intersection of wood, metal sheet, nylon cloth and rod, we crafted a dynamic frame-within-a-frame model shown above with parts of it's frames shown in an exploded view. The inner frame, capable of rotatory motion, showcases our innovative approach to joinery and material fusion.

"The urge to destroy is also a creative urge." -Picasso. The structure of the inclined tower collapsed under the weight of nearly 4kgs, bringing to light the centre of gravity which we had kept outside the main body of the tower. The fault points also consisted of certain loose bracings which finally resulted in our understanding of importance of tight bracings and the physics behind a structure at an angle of about 21 degrees.