Head of Ife: Headdress Design

Crafted in the late 14th - 15th century in Yoruba, Nigeria, “The Head of Ife” is a sculptural masterpiece. Named after the town Ife, where it was unearthed in 1938. Utilizing the technique of cire perdue (lost wax) along with the medium of zinc-brass to create a realistic and natural facial portrait.

The headdress of the sculpture holds great power and significance for the Yoruba nation. The piece suggests that the individual represented in this sculpture was of high social status or political ranking. Ife was the former religious and royal centre of the Yoruba people so it was assumed with further exploration that this head probably depicts an Ooni. A ruler of the West African kingdom of Ife that flourished between AD 1100 and 1500.

The Head of Ife is located in the British Museum and images of the sculpture doesn't do it's beauty justice. And the head piece being such a striking and important piece of the sculpture, that should be the one part replicated for other individuals to study and gain knowledge from.

In this guid, you will learn how to build a replica of the headdress with the online software Tinkercad.

• Sketchbook (any size)
• Pencil
• Tinkercad (https://www.tinkercad.com/)

Getting your ideas out of your head and onto a piece of paper is a the first step in any major design/art project. When you start off your brainstorming you should begin with drawing out the initial design of your artifact. This will help you map outline the basic shapes making up your chosen artifact. Adding details like shading and texture also will help you gain a better understanding of your artifact. What materials were used, how they were used, and what that means about the artifacts origins are key factors in this project.

The the main shapes you must include in your initial sketch are the rounded rectangle of the headdress base. This will be the shape you build off of the most because it is connecting all of the different elements of the original design together. You can then branch off into the other three key elements. The disk shape at the base of the leaf shape, the line connecting the leaf shape and the actual leaf shape.

You can interpret these individual shapes any way you seem fit however it is incredibly important that you keep these three features in the same shape as the original.

Once you have a strong understanding of the basic principles of your chosen artifact it is now time to add your personal creative twist to the design itself. You can now create a design that you personally find aesthetically pleasing while still having cultural accuracy to the original design.

Now that you have created thumbnails of your cultural artifact you can now transfer the chosen design into Thinkercad.

Creating your own version of the design over to the digital platform. Tinkercad, as a platform, can get incredibly confusing very quickly. You will need to know exactly what shapes to use and where to place them together. Bellow is a list of the shapes you will need and where you can find them in tinkercad.

• Wedge
• Rounded Box
• Sphere
• Solar Leaf

There is no select order to place these shapes however it is important to re-create this general design with the shapes given.

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Step 1: Place your Wedge onto our workspace, modify and tweak the shape in anyway that you see fit.

Step 2: Place two Rounded Boxes on the edges of the Wedge with the front surfaces lining up with the front surface of the wedge.

Step 3: Connect the Sphere to the middle of the Wedge, you can flatten or elongate the

Step 4: Connect the Solar Leaf to the Sphere with a connecter piece. This connecter piece can be a decreased cylinder or a tube of some kind. Or you don't have to connect the Solar Leaf to the Sphere with a connecter at all, you can just slap it on there and call it a day.

You should now have a rough outline of the main shape to this design. You can now customize and tweak this design to your liking. You can add smaller Spheres as embellishments or change the size of different shapes. Do whatever you want dude.