IZation Labs

As a result of procrastinating all day (for those of you still in school, don’t try procrastination at home, I’m a trained professional) instead of getting to work on assignments, I decided to start work on a nice little robot character I found in one of my sketchbooks from a year or two ago. It’s too late to continue on him now, but here is an image of the work in progress with some random rust textures affixed. He has no legs, feet, or manipulators on his arms, and there’s still plenty to do, but he is shaping up to be a good looking little rust bucket.

Note, the trapezoid on his chest will eventually have button-like rivets along the outer edge, much like aviator jackets of old. He is to be a steampunk robot (one of the best kinds there is).

-Lace

Amal Graafstra, author of RFID Toys, has recently collaborating with Robotics Connection to create a brand new, incredibly powerful RFID reader! Here’s an excerpt from his website.

“Here’s the feature shortlist;

Here he is, my first official full size character model; BahtHead. Well, watch the gif below, anyway, and you’ll see his current state in the last frame. I’ve been making renders along the way (didn’t start on the head until it was nearly done) so you can see the different additions and occasional subtractions I’ve made to his structure over time.

I know he’s not finished, there are plenty of places that I’ll still tweak. Next up, I have to snap on some rubber gloves and start watching some hardcore rigging tutorials. This should be interesting.

The head is, to my knowledge, printable, but I haven’t done a test order yet. The body won’t be printable for a while still.

Comments and suggestions are more than welcome! I need the input! You there! I’m imagining that look on your face. You have something to say, to suggest, don’t you? Spit it out!

–Lace

I’ve mentioned Shapeways before, and I finally decided that it might be time to give them a shot. For a quick recap, they are a 3D printing company that caters to… relatively poor artists. Which means that their prices are much more manageable than most. The only homemade model I had on hand to send in was the king model from the (still) unfinished chess animation that I made, as seen here in the bottom right hand of the picture.

My part is scheduled to arrived today (April 6th), so expect a photo update soon!

Here’s the next model I plan to have printed, assuming I ever decide I want to add enough detail to make it worthwhile. I sketched the concept one night when I didn’t have any early classes and the caffeine was strong within me, and it has been developing ever sense. It’s my current ‘pet’ project. I’m hoping to use it to learn mechanical rigging and animation as well.

I know there are plenty of Star Wars fans out there. I’m not big on Star Wars, (just the special effects involved), but yes, I DO know it looks like an ‘ATAT’. That’s not what I was going for, but hey, it is what it is.

–Lace