2006-03-19

What was I thinking?

1996-January - March: Stinger
I can't recall how, but Carlton Calvin, a local guy who was selling keychains with scorpions in them contacted me about designing a display for the key chains.
From the start I knew the budget was small so I tried to come up with something simple. I made a bunch of scorpions, spiders and beetles out of sculpy. The several scorpions had large tails to hang the keychains from. Everything was mounted on a large background shape and base with more sculpy for the logo. Then I made two huge silicone molds plus a small one for the tails.
It sort of worked, but not well. After many experiments, I finally cast one entire set of parts and handed everything over to the guy. It took many weeks of work and I was only paid 75$ + materials. He wanted me to work on it more to make the thing easier to assemble and complained that the resin smelled very bad. I was not interested in working on it any further.
Did I learn anything from his project? Stay tuned to find out.

My very first paid design project

1995-September - December: ToothPacer
Simple idea and a simple design. I liked it. Too bad it never went anywhere. The idea was a toothbrush holder with a timer built in, the handles are holders and when it is flipped the opposite handle becomes the holder.
The idea was thought up by Anne Nowlin, the wife of the Steve Nowlin who ran the gallery at ArtCenter. I was due to take an internship at SmithBruni Design Colsultants, but it fell through at the last minute; too late to register for the term. I was able to take a few classes, but had lots of free time. I was handed this job via Marty Smith, the department chair.
I made some sketches of various ideas. Then a bunch of clay models to get a sense of scale and proportion. I finished up with several prototypes with hand sculpted parts and a custom blown hourglass. I molded a bunch of parts in various colors. It turned out quite nice, too bad I never took any photos of the finished product.

2006-03-17

The beginning of the End

After 3 entries in my main blog, I realized that what I should be blogging is what I work on. So this blog will contain all the projects I have worked on over the years. I will start from the beginning.