Trophy Project

So a family friend recently finished his 21th Cape Town Cycle Tour, which is quite the achievement. So I thought I'd make a trophy of sorts to present to him as a congratulations.

I recently bought myself an "Eleksmaker Elekslaser-a3 pro" with a 7W laser. I was planning to use it to engrave wood and cardboard, try cutting vinyls and its main purpose is for pcb etching which I want to experiment with.

Now...with the addition to the laser, I also have a 3d printer and a "CNC mill" (currently can only cut things out....need to rebuild it). So I saw this as the perfect opportunity to try a project utilizing all of these tools.

Design took way longer than I thought. I went through about 8 complete iterations....just shy of starting manufacturing...but such is things.

In the end I decided on CnC'ing a bike gear from clear acrylic and wet sanding it with a fine grit to give it a milky effect

The proposed gear

One of the failed cuts (the mill is scheduled for a rework soon)

The center piece is to be a piece of wood with Laser engraved details.  Unfortunately.....because I didn't understand the laser well enough....I messed up all the wood I was planned to use...So I ended up using some MDF....not great but sill produced a interesting looking result result.

And finally, to tie everything together, a 3D printed 'jig'. Bolted to the acrylic using M5 Bolts (spare parts from building one of my 3d printers) and 3d printed washers.

I printed this, painted it gold and added some basic grunge to make it seem more....gritty.

(I was in a bit of a rush while making this that I seem to have forgotten to take pictures of this components' progress)

I was extremely please to find that I had all the dimensions correct on the first try, giving me a very satisfied feeling.

A tablet stand I printed earlier coming in handy

I decided to paint the stand black, giving the entire piece a sense of....finesse.
I'm pretty happy with how it turned out....and happy to report, so is the recipient.

The final product on the recipient's desk

I feel that next time I do something like this I can definitely improve upon what I've learnt during this endeavour.

Ghost in the shell wall painting

A "Quck" little update on a project I'm working on (you know, besides varsity, gaming and the 300+ other projects I never finish xD)

In my room I have this "massive" bare white wall, and for a while I've always wanted to do something on it. However it seems that I have commitment issues or something, because I could never decide on something that I would like to keep there. Then I had an idea, why not do it on canvas, so if I'm tired of it I can just take it down. (brilliant xD)

So, with this new founded 'hazaa', I set of to find a image I would really like on my wall.
Now I really like myself some Ghost in the shell...so why not a painting/picture from that. I started re-watching the series and came upon this scene

And I just had to do this.
So I started with the layout of the canvases (because a large one is expensive...and I had these lying around)

Then, just to get an 'Idea' of the layout, I overlapped the image onto the canvases using Photoshop.

Now excited with how this could possibly look, I pulled away at redrawing the low res image iver onto canvas. Took a while, still needs some touch up but ended up with this.

Used a light blue clutch...this means that trying to get a picture of the sketch visible...kinda hard

Next step would be to start the colouring (painting) in. Stay tuned for updates on those.

Longboard paintjob

So for my brothers birthday I thought I'd surprise him by having his longboard "stolen" and give it back to him on his birthday with a custom paint job. I tried to keep up with pictures as I was making it...so here we go

So I started with taking of the trucks and sanding of the old design (the old art was an attempt of my brothers with which he wasn't to happy with...so me taking it of is fine...right?)

Hand sanding with 100 grit sand paper...fun (took me about an hour)

I then proceeded to think up a design, something my brother would like. So let's see, he is starting high school, likes anime, ninjas, oh and lets not for get girls...aha...light bulb. Anime, ninja, assassin girl....thingy. Now that I have an idea, I started sketching

Started with a light pencil to sketch out the basic concept

Got the design how I liked it, so went over with darker pencil

I then had to start painting...now my experience with traditional painting is nothing short of lacking...so this was going to be interesting. To add to the challenge, I'm strapped for money...so no fancy paint or variety of colours (yes I spell colours with a u). I decided to go with acrylic paint, as it's fast('ish) drying and easy to manage. Due to budget constraints...I had 3 colours; Black and white (they are not colours) and then Red, Blue and Yellow. Prime colours go.

I started with the skin, moved on to the jacket, then the scarf, then pants & top and finally the hair.

So I kinda forgot to take pictures here so the most recent one was approx 1/3 through the painting process.

Started with basic colours and shading

Some more colouring...majority on the face and small details like sword and accessories

 After a few days for touching up here and there, getting the shading down to an acceptable point, I painted the peach blossoms in the background and started the out lining.

The end is nigh

2 days before my brother birthday, I finished it up. As a final touch I signed the bottom of the board (cause...you know...art) and sealed everything in nicely with Rust-Oleum Satin clear lacquer. I re-attached the trucks and waited for D-day.

The final product

 I wasn't there for his birthday (as he had his birthday on a Monday...and I was on campus) but was told he loved it (and was surprised...so success).

All in all, it was an interesting project. Took aprox 2 weeks to do, and the results looks pretty damn interesting (if I may say so myself)