New Blades

I've finally recovered from all of the excitement of New Blades 2012 so I thought I'd update. For those who don't know New Blades is a graduate exhibition for modelmakers across the U.K and Ireland run by 4D Modelshop.

The day of New Blades itself was amazing fun and really inspirational. There is so much amazing work out there! It was also brilliant to network and connect with so many influential people in the modelmaking world and finally get my work out there! Here's a photo that the lovely folks at 4D tweeted of my model.

I also did an interview for 4D so watch out for that! (Although I'm pretty sure I blunder my way through it, cameras are not my friends!) 

Hit the jump for some more info about the whole trip and photos of the display we had.

Realistic Pikachu

This is the accumulation of 20 weeks of self directed work that took me from design work to a fully finished piece. I chose to take the well known Pokémon character, Pikachu, and create a piece that looked like a real animal in a natural history museum setting while still retaining the quintessential design elements that identify it as Pikachu. 

I wanted this project to showcase not only my design skill but also all of the fabrication knowledge I have aquired over the last four years of college. Pikachu was sculpted in plasteline and then molded using silicone, Smooth On - Plasti Paste, and fibreglass depending on the piece that was being molded. It was cast in Dragonskin using the Fuse-Fx tinting system and then fully hair punched with a comibnation of hand dyed horse hair and bought animal hair. 

Inside the core there are two independently controlled motors. I laser cut cam mechanisms out of acrylic to create a breathing movement and in order to make the nose snuffle. The button in the front panel does two different things. It simultaneously starts a 40 second recording with facts about Pikachu and the nose snuffing mechanism which is timed to run for the same time as the recording. This was in order to create and informational and interactive element to the piece and give it more a real world feeling. I haven't managed to get a video of the whole thing in action yet but here's the recording that plays.

The IADT Graduate exhibition opened last night and is open for a week (8th June-14th June) so you can check out Pikachu in person if you want but if not here's a peek of him insitu thanks to Fiachra Carroll.

                                   

Hit the jump for some design processes and informational posters that were part of Pikachu's display.