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.