sling'n green

Way before Halloween I a started reading the Green Lantern Rebirth comics.  I have always liked the Green Lantern but reading this book gave me a much greater appreciation for the character.  I think what draws me most to the Green Lantern character is the idea that the green light is concentrated willpower and that what you are able to create is a direct reflection of your willpower to create it.

Like I'm sure many GL fans, after becoming intrigued by the character I wanted a power ring.  Unlike most other GL fans I started to think about the GL ring in terms of industrial design.  After looking at many of the rings that are out there, I was amazed at how large and obtrusive they are.  I wasn't going to walk around with it and I figured that if Hal Jordan was wearing that huge green ring around all day it would take about 3 min. before his secret identity was not very secret.  So, with that idea in mind I started to design my own, more subtle GL power ring.   I sketched it out, carved it in wax, and molded it.

Currently I have the green ring which I wore with my Halloween costume and a bronze version that I can wear like any normal ring.  I'm about to make a second (cleaner) mold.

Pics of the bronze ring, the mold and concept sketches after the jump.

beware my power, green lantern's light

After being forced to abandon the Space Ranger costume due to time constraints I had about 2 weeks to figure out a new costume.  I took Kyle Rayner's Green Lantern suit as a source of inspiration and made some modifications to it.  The biggest change was that I wanted to make a jacket and pants rather than a skin tight body suit.  I created a suit with motorcycle jacket look to it.  It zips up the center and then the front flap Velcros into place.  I also made a pair of pants to match the jacket fabric.  I really like the way the raised stripes look on the pants.

Additional photos after the jump.

despicable me - minion plush

My little sister is a big fan of the movie Despicable Me, specifically of the little Minions.  The other day we were talking and she said that she was looking for a toy version of the Minions but was surprised that she could not find any.  I was also surprised, the things are pretty cute looking and based on the DVD advertising they are clearly the big selling point of the film; it seemed like it would be an obvious move to make toys of the the little things.  It turns out that they do make a few plush minions, but they are pretty crude claw game type of things (a few pieces of fabric with screen printed eyes, etc.).

I decided that I could to it better.  The resulting polar fleece minion (about 20" tall)  is shown above with more info and pics after the jump.

no evil will escape my sight...

About two weeks before Halloween my little brother was still without a costume.  By this point, I had finally admitted that there was no way that I was going to be able to finish my Space Ranger costume and had decided to make myself a Green Lantern costume instead (more on that to come).  I figured, Green Lantern Corps. sweet.  One of the many cool aspects of the Green Lanterns is that their suits are light constructs and since everyone creates constructs differently based on their personality it makes sense that everyones uniform would be different.  So on that note I asked my little brother to sketch out what he wanted his jacket to look like.

More after the jump.

ridgid office - pencil sharpener

After some concept sketching and study modeling I created a physical model of the pencil sharpener from my set of RIDGID branded office products.  One of the primary features that I decided was really important for this brand and the target user was for the pencil sharpener to sharpen rectangular carpenters pencils rather than standard pencils.   I finished the pencil sharpener model around Christmas a few years ago and I took it over to Home Depot to take a few pictures next to other RIDGID products.  The pencil sharpener must have looked right at home because an employee made sure I wasn't stealing anything as I left the store.

Additional pictures after the jump.

ridgid office concept sketches

Here are some of the sketches I did last year when I was designing a series of office products (stapler, hole punch, and pencil sharpener) based on the RIDGID brand language.  I tend to alternate between sketching in orthographic and perspective.  I also tend selectively marker render, I think it is a nice way to add visual interest to the page.

a fully customizable shoe

Advanced Parametric Modeling is essentially equation based modeling.  Rather than just building a model in Solidworks as you go, parametric modeling takes a bit more pre-planning.  You begin with a series of key sketches/dimensions (which you drive) and related all subsequent dimensions/sketches/features back to your driving dimensions.  The big advantage of modeling parametrically is that you can very easily modify one of your driving dimensions at the beginning of the feature tree and the rest of the model will automatically update itself.

I wanted to show the possibilities of parametric modeling by designing a lightweight single piece parkour shoe (one with a split big toe) that automatically adjusts it shape to perfectly fit any wearer by entering a series of foot measurements into a data table including; foot length, ball width, heel width, toe length, instep width, toe spread, heel height, ball height, and toe height.  Theoretically,a company could produce custom shoes by 3D printing a hard mold, and then filling the mold with a flexible shoe material.  Right now this would be pretty expensive, but who knows what the future holds for mass customization.

 A 3-D printed model the shoe which fits my foot is pictured above.    More pictures are after the jump.

mp3 fedora

Following the success of the Keypad Tie, the question was raised "what about the girls?". So we designed and developed the MP3 fedora; a hat that allows you to control basic MP3 player functions via Bluetooth.  Pressing the brim allows the user to play, pause and scroll through tracks.  Swiping across the brim allows the user to raise and lower the volume.  When designing the MP3 fedora, the challenge was to make use of the same 3 design guidelines introduced with the Keypad tie.

More info and photos after the jump.

Keypad Tie Update

Check out the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HGX5V9pnEM

I finally got a chance to take some nicer photos of the Keypad Tie.  Another shot after the jump.

avatar inspired dress

For our last assignment for our fashion design class we were given one week and a movie and had to design and build a dress inspired by the movie  I was given the recent James Cameron film Avatar.  Being an industrial designer and not a fashion designer,  I wanted to stay away from the over the top types of dresses that you often see.  I wanted to create a dress that someone could and would actually wear.

My primary inspiration came form the blues and greens in the war paint the Navi use.  The green stripe was achieved by masking off and spray painting the back side of the fabric.  I was also inspired by the braided headdresses that the Navi wear and integrated it into the strap design.  Drawing from some of my ID experience I molded styrene to form the straps and braided leather over them. The result is a suspended dress   with some unique cut outs.  Because I molded the styrene the dress will hold its shape around the body but is still flexible enough to wear.

More pictures after the jump.

that's despicable

A female friend of mine was trying to decide on a Halloween costume and thought about being a minion from the movie Despicable Me.  She quickly dismissed the idea because she thought there wouldn't be a way to move around in a huge costume like that, not to mention the fact that it wouldn't look "cute".   Although she decided on a different costume, the question was now in my head; "How do you make a cute female minion costume?".   The sketch of what I came up with is above, colored version to come.

It breaks down like this: yellow long sleeve shirt, short overalls, black leather boots, "science lab" rubber gloves, and a yellow baseball cap with a minion eye and goggles on top.

To Infinity and Beyond...

I've always been a Buzz Lightyear fan, he's the embodiment of a clean cut hero.  After playing with the idea for a while I started to re-imagine what a Space Ranger would be like in real life.  The main difference between my suit and the Buzz Lightyear suit is that mine is designed for sub-atmospheric engagement where as the original seems to be modeled after a space suit.  Overall I attempted to keep many of the features which make Buzz iconic and recognizable; the arm laser, the big chest buttons, wing pack, and the color scheme.

The concept sketch above was intended to be my Halloween costume last year.  Sadly it was too large of a project based on my schedule.  I'm hoping to have it built before next Halloween.  Colored sketches to come

More sketches and commentary on the design after the jump.