The Sustained Investigation documents your inquiry-guided exploration of a spatial question, three-dimensional theme, or design idea through a body of related three-dimensional work developed across the school year.

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What you submit:

Images (15 digital images): Fifteen images that collectively demonstrate your three-dimensional inquiry through practice, experimentation, and revision. For AP 3-D work, these images include:

• Multiple-view photographs of finished three-dimensional works (front, side, back, overhead, or detail as needed to communicate form fully)

• Process documentation — works in progress, material tests, structural experiments, maquettes (small-scale models), and construction stages

• Detail shots that highlight specific spatial decisions, surface qualities, material properties, or formal relationships

• Documentation of attempts that led to revision or new directions

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The critical difference from 2-D portfolios: a single three-dimensional work often requires two or more images to communicate its form adequately. Plan your 15 images with this photographic demand in mind.

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Written Evidence (typed responses to prompts): Three written responses addressing:

1. The inquiry — What spatial question, three-dimensional theme, or design problem is driving your investigation? Why is it significant to you and to three-dimensional design?

2. Practice and experimentation — How did you explore your inquiry through sustained three-dimensional making? What materials, structures, or spatial approaches did you try, and what did you discover?

3. Revision — How did you return to and improve your three-dimensional work based on what you learned? What changed spatially, materially, or conceptually, and why?

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Scoring criteria for the SI section: Reviewers evaluate whether the three-dimensional inquiry is clearly articulated and meaningfully explored across the body of work; whether the images demonstrate genuine practice, spatial experimentation, and revision; and whether the written evidence specifically documents those processes with reference to materials, structures, and spatial decisions. Generic or vague written evidence consistently lowers SI scores even when the three-dimensional work itself is strong.

The Selected Works section demonstrates the quality of your finished three-dimensional design work at its strongest. This is where the spatial sophistication, material mastery, and conceptual depth of your 3-D practice are evaluated directly.

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What you submit:

5 three-dimensional works, each shown from multiple angles with written commentary: Five individual three-dimensional artworks — each represented by at least two digital images showing different views — that collectively demonstrate skillful synthesis of materials, spatial processes, and ideas in 3-D design. For each work, brief written commentary identifies the specific materials and processes used and the ideas the work addresses.

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The multiple-view requirement is non-negotiable for three-dimensional work: a single photograph of a sculpture or ceramic piece cannot communicate its form, back, interior, or spatial relationships with the surrounding environment. Plan at least two views per work, and more for complex or large-scale pieces.

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Scoring criteria for the Selected Works section: Reviewers evaluate the quality of three-dimensional design — how effectively you apply 3-D principles (form, volume, spatial relationship, balance, proportion, rhythm), the sophistication of your material and construction choices, and the conceptual depth of the work. Photography quality directly affects scoring because readers can only evaluate what the images communicate — unclear, single-view, or poorly lit photographs consistently underrepresent strong work.

Form and Volume

The defining characteristic of three-dimensional work — the actual mass an object occupies in space and its relationship to the void around it. Strong 3-D design makes form decisions intentionally: when to add mass, when to remove it, when to let emptiness speak as strongly as material presence.

How a three-dimensional work occupies, defines, or transforms its surrounding space — and how the spaces within and around the work relate to each other. Positive space (material) and negative space (void) interact in sculpture and design in ways that have no flat equivalent.

The distribution of visual and physical weight across a three-dimensional form — symmetrical (formal equilibrium), asymmetrical (dynamic tension), or radial (centred organisation). Unlike 2-D balance, 3-D balance must work from all viewing angles, not just from the front.

The relative size of a three-dimensional work to the human body and to its surrounding environment, and the size relationships between parts of the work itself. Unexpected scale — objects made enormous that are usually intimate, or miniature that are usually grand — is one of the most powerful tools in three-dimensional design.

The repetition, alternation, or progression of three-dimensional elements that guides the viewer's eye (and sometimes body) around, through, or across a work. Three-dimensional rhythm can be experienced through walking around an installation, examining the surface of a ceramic vessel, or moving through an architectural space.

Three-dimensional work has actual texture — the physical surface quality of materials that can be both seen and touched. Controlling surface texture (smooth to rough, matte to reflective, regular to random) is one of the most expressive tools of 3-D design.

Unlike flat work, three-dimensional objects are inseparable from the light that falls on them — form is revealed by shadow, texture emerges in raking light, and the same object looks fundamentally different in different lighting conditions. Considering how light will interact with a three-dimensional work is part of its design, not just its documentation.

How the visual and material elements of a three-dimensional work cohese into a whole (unity) while maintaining spatial and material interest through variation (variety). A portfolio series that explores the same spatial idea through varied materials and scales demonstrates both unity and variety effectively.

AP 3-D Art and Design accepts any three-dimensional medium or approach. The key is not which medium you use but how skillfully and intentionally you apply it within your spatial inquiry. Common media in high-scoring portfolios include:

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• Ceramics — wheel-thrown and hand-built pottery, sculptural ceramics, raku, earthenware, stoneware, porcelain

• Sculpture — stone carving, wood carving, direct plaster, clay sculpture, concrete, foam

• Metal fabrication — welding, forging, bending, sheet metal construction, found metal assemblage

• Wire sculpture — linear drawing in space, structural frameworks, wearable wire art

• Paper and cardboard construction — architectural models, paper engineering, origami-influenced design

• Found object and assemblage — combining found materials into three-dimensional compositions

• Jewelry and wearable art — metal, resin, fabric, mixed media as body-related three-dimensional design

• Fiber arts (3-D) — weaving in the round, macramé structures, textile sculpture

• Installation art — site-specific works that engage with and transform physical space

• Architectural model-making — structural design, spatial exploration, built environment studies

• Digital fabrication — 3-D printing, laser-cut assembly (where the design and construction decisions are the student's own)

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Mixed-media approaches — combining ceramics with found metal, or wood construction with textile — can be highly effective in demonstrating experimentation and material range within a unified inquiry.