Halloween: More important than you might think.

For this year's Halloween I went all-out... First time I really bothered with it since I came to college, and boy, was I missing out...
So three weeks ahead I started to feel the pressure since I didn't have a costume yet, and eventually it hit me-- to make a Prawn from District 9. It's a new enough movie that only a select few will get it (which is fine by me), but also not have any better costumes done by others to compare it to. I knew it'd be an intense ordeal, but three weeks is long enough right?...
Barely. I worked all day every day whenever I could... which usually meant cutting far into my sleep time. It was definitely a struggle, and I'm glad it's over. But now I have some cool pics, and a $100 gift card I won at my school's costume contest!




(These two above were taken by Dieter Amick)

Anyways, the whole walkthrough can be found HERE
Special thanks goes out to Robert Espinosa, who happened to model a prawn in excellent 3D detail just prior to my construction. His image was my primary reference.

Here are a few samples from the set:

Been too long...

No real heavy-hitting stuff right now but I thought it was about time to get some more of my sketches up here again. That and I've been hearing complaints/appeals

Most of this stuff is old, from just from before my review... The last two are very recent though. Sorry for the intense load time. I'm not a big web optimization kind of guy I guess...
















This guy's a work in progress... Started him at DecibelFest in Seattle. You might be seeing more of him later.

I did it

This morning I found out I will be continuing my studies in industrial design at Western in the fall.
I had my portfolio review yesterday afternoon and I wasn't sure how it went. I rushed through my 15 minutes and I didn't feel like I said everything that I wanted to say. I felt really numb after I came out and sat around for 2 hours with what felt like a hole in my brain.
Eventually I got my ass out of the building, bought a donut and a Sobe and took a nap to kill time. Because that night was going to be one of celebration for all of the hard work we did that year. It started with a movie with a handful of ID majors and then we hit the party put on by the juniors. It was Adobe themed, and it really kicked ass.









These are my presentation boards for the review. I was really self-conscious about how if I had taken away the second board, it would look like I was going into a review for illustration rather than industrial design... But I tried to get across that I have a specific set of skills that I can offer to a team of designers, and my experience with online artist communities have given me extra experience in giving and taking criticism (thanks, Eatpoo, C9, Conceptart, and apedogs!). I'm super-excited and I'm looking forward to working with my classmates next fall.

I'd like to thank my classmates for working so hard and sharing their discoveries, skills, and supplies; the juniors and seniors for helping so much and sharing their insights, my professors for putting together such an awesome program, and especially my friends and family for supporting me and keeping me sane and helping out in whatever way they knew how. It means a lot to me.

I promised

Here are a couple of my renderings I said I would put up last quarter. I started scanning things for my review and thought I'd put them up while I prep them for my presentation.


This assignment had us convert shipping containers into housing. I especially liked using the super-fine pens for this kind of drawing (though I smudge a lot).


This was for a backpack assignment my prof let me put my own spin on. Did lots of research and it was lots of fun to do. I'm still developing this one a little bit.

A couple more coming up soon.

I'm not as invincible as I thought...

I'm really, really, really tired. And getting sick. And I'm either overdoing or underworking every project I do. So far I'm just not resonating well with my classes (so far being halfway through the quarter).
Anyways, I thought I'd put up the work I put way too much time into.

Shampoo and Conditioner Bottle REDOO





Process shots

1) Made custom tools out of foam with sandpaper glued to them to help me bore the "eye"s into the side. Hours and hours of tedious wristwork ensued.
2) Used an old speedball carving kit to create a recession, faking a part line.
3) Popped off the top which was glued with Super 77 (I made the cut on the table saw before sanding the whole shape so I wouldn't lose the foam subtracted by the blade.
4) Augured and smoothed out a channel for a piece of foam to slide along an embedded nail for the sliding cap mechanism.
5) Mask. Paint. Wait. Repeat.

Kiln Goddess









With her right arm she protects the pot, and with her left she destroys it. The face is blank-- emotionless, unaffected. She is a god of fate rather than one action or influence.

I'm going to slip into a coma now. Later.

Here's most of my work from ID CAD Skills. They were all done in Photoshop, Illustrator, and or Rhino, or a combination of those. Some of this stuff will look VERY familiar, but with a few last-minute changed before the deadlines.




















These next few were for my design project concerning a product that would aid someone with a brain injury. I call this the Urna, a high-tech piece of eyewear that uses a small camera to record and enhance one's vision, with a navigational detail overlay like a HUD (heads-up display) projected through two LCD screens on the inside of the goggles.







It's apparently impossible to find an image of a MAN in a GROCERY STORE. So for my context image I had to splice a bunch of images into one. I know it's goofy looking but it gets the point across, right?



Maybe by next weekend I'll have some of my sketches and renderings up.

Apparently I didn't update very much last quarter... Now it's going to take me days to document everything I did, but I'll start by uploading everything that's already accounted for.
These are my final photos of my models from Sophomore ID 1. Almost right off the bat it became evident to me that I'm not as good at model-making as I thought I would be. I put a lot of time into projects that were flawed on a foundational level, and though I didn't have time to redo all of my mistakes, I feel like I can take a lot from what I learned here and apply it to the sequel class this spring. But really, I just need to start earlier on my assignments....


Foam core stool. Supports over 200 pounds (precariously-balanced, I might add...)


Fun foam "Wisp" beach shoe.


Polystyrene toothbrush.


Polyurethane shampoo and conditioner bottle set.


Aluminum tape dispenser



All of these pics were taken with a small Sony Cyber-shot, so nothing fancy here. It was nice to exercise those severely under-developed photograph muscles.

Stay posted for highlights from my CAD and hand-drawn rendering portfolios.

I'm not dead yet

Here are a few more assignments from my ID skills class:







... And here;s one of my sophomore ID projects: a toothbrush made out of polystyrene sheets.





More coming up in a bit when I have time to photograph/upload. I've got a lot of renderings stocked up. And no I never did get around to part 2 of my fall quarter post. Oh well, old news now.