Out of the box part III

The original goal was to have this piece finished before the end of the year as it was one of my CHALLENGE 2010 projects. But, ALAS, it is simply not going to happen. Oh well. The total ended up being 11.65 projects completed this year. Not bad I guess.

We did make pretty good progress however, considering we only put an hour or two at most into the project each week. The LED's look pretty cool and give the piece added dimension and bling. The smoke really stumped me for a while but balls of the sculpting epoxy over crumpled tinfoil (to save material) looked pretty good. In the end I decided that alien smoke didn't have to look like anything like the smoke we are used to seeing on earth after all. When I added the orange LED's in the rear jet engine they threw a fabulous glow on the smoke and all was well.

Well keep hacking away at the smoke trail which proved to be a much larger task than I imagined. The detail on the rear engine will be done today and I may even get the rivets glued onto the 'steel' bands on the box. I'll probably sneak a few more bubbles onto the smoke as well. In another week or two this piece will be done.  And you just know I have something really cool in mind after that. It will be a brand new year after all...

Happy New Year!

-dan

Out of the box continued

I sent the file to the router and then whipped up a plywood box that would serve as the base structure for the sign. The top and bottom 'metal' band was to be 30 lb Precision Board, like the 'wooden' boards. Everything was cut at a 45 degree angle but tapered - just to make it a little trickier. The hole in the top (and a matching hole in the bottom) was for the transformer and wiring for the LED lighting.

For the smoke trail and flying saucer support I decided to stick to what I knew best - welded steel. I bent up a piece of 1" x 1" square tubing and welded it to a steel plate which I bolted to the plywood. Then I whipped some pencil rod into graceful curves and welded this on to support the expanded mesh which in turn would support the sculpting epoxy.

When I was done it looked like this. The 'T' shaped steel rods at the top will be laminated inside the flying saucer halves.

I left one side of the box off. I would glue it on then as a demonstration piece at our Sign Magic Workshop which was held back in October.

At our Sign Magic Workshops we try our best to cover every aspect of our projects we possibly can. Some folks have never glued High Density Urethane before and so it is one more thing to learn.

Then as a class project I first demonstrate how to tie wire onto a frame and then everyone jumps in to try their hand at it. They quickly learn that everything we do is an acquired skill, best accomplished with lots of practice.

At this workshop the theme was 'A' for alien. My alien of course was the little fellow that would pilot the space craft. He measures about 8" tall. Here we are testing the effect LED's would have from the instruments on his flying saucer. 

The flying saucer file was built at the workshop and routed while we were doing other things. Here one of the students is giving me a hand assembling it on the structure.

And lastly I decided to check the height of my little creature in the space ship. The glass dome had been already ordered. Some minor adjustments were in order.  We got a rough coat of epoxy on the smoke trail at the workshop but little else. It was an eager bunch with lots of questions. I was kept pretty busy the entire weekend.  Right after that our shop got really busy too. The flying saucer project would simply have to wait it's turn.

Next time I'll post the progress we've made from this point...

-dan

Out of the Box

A number of months ago we started work on a fun piece for our own display. We all know how those projects go. The shop inevitably gets busy and the projects get shoved off into a corner and gather dust. Well, our shop is kind of like everyone else's in that regard. The good news is that is didn't stay in the corner for long - or at least not very long each time it got shoved there. We've been making some progress. The project proved to be a little more complex and take considerably more time than I first imagined when I designed it.

The first thing I did was design the vectors. I decided to make all four sides the same instead of adding our name. That made things easy. The trick task on this project would be to curve the sides inward while splaying out the top of the box. With EnRoute there were a number of ways this could have been accomplished. I could have used the Sweep Two Rails function or I could use my favorite technique of applying bitmaps. You don't need to guess which one I used. First up was the vectors - done full size of course.

Next I created a bitmap of a blend which faded from white to black to white again. It was  easy and was accomplished in seconds. I kept in mind that white would raise the relief, black would do nothing. Grays would do in between depending on their value. I applied this bitmap to the relief of the boards and the lettering in separate passed, keeping the numeric values the same so the curves matched.

Then I took a cartoon woodgrain bitmap from my collection and applied that to the boards. The end result looked something like this.

The letters were then positioned on the boards and merged together with a flat background. I was pretty happy with the result as it looked pretty much as I had imagined. I kept the boards slightly oversized as I would need to trim them on the table saw to get the corners cut at a forty five degree angle. I would measure the wooden box I would glue it all to get accurate measurements.

I grabbed an end view shot off my screen to show just how much curve I managed to achieve using the blend bitmap.

Next time I'll pick up where we left off...

-dan

Back from the holidays...

 I hope everyone had a great Christmas with those they love. Here we had a relatively quiet, small Christmas this year with only twelve family and friends around the table. It was a good time.

Just before Christmas we finished the Nag's Head sign. Our customer was delighted with the result.

Yesterday we got back into the shop once more and began getting things rolling once more on projects which had lain idle for a few days. The Glass Hive Studio sign is the furthest along. I glued the front and back sides of the sign together yesterday with vinyl covered Lexan sandwiched in between.  Some steel rods were also laminated inside the frame which I would weld to the structure as we proceeded. This morning I used my trusty air powered die grinder to sculpt the edges of the sign.

Then I bent a piece of tubing to shape and welded it to the sign supports. This piece was then inserted into the sign support base, leveled and welded securely. Over the next couple of days we'll complete the sculpting with the epoxy and then jump into final paint. As you can see in the pictures we had pre-painted the areas of the sign that were to be in contact with the Lexan to make things easier.

-dan

Make two aspirin - send them in the morning

 One of the relatively simple, but still interesting projects we did this year was for a sign shop back east. They needed two giant aspirins for one of their clients. I raided the medicine cabinet to measure up one of the little white pills... then scaled it up to a giant three feet in diameter. The logo vectors were downloaded from the internet. The files were simple to create in EnRoute. It was a simple domed relief with the letters being a reverse bevel. They were cut using a 3/8" ball nose bit. While the faces were on the MultiCam I set about figuring out how to build the sturdy frame inside which wold hold the eye bolts  to hang the heavy pieces from the ceiling.

The pills were routed from 30 lb Precision Board. I decided to laminate styrofoam into the center to keep the weight down just a little. Even so, the pills weighed in at a hundred pounds each. The pieces glued together using Coastal Enterprises one part urethane glue. Being smoother than most of our work I did more sanding on this project than I probably did the rest of the year - not my favorite task.

The end result was two pills I'd really choke on if I had to swallow them. We boxed them up and sent them on their way. I bumped into my customer at the USSC show in Atlantic City a few weeks ago. The giant pills are still hanging proudly and doing their task.

-dan

New website

This post serves as some unabashed self promotion without a doubt. Each year about this time I re-design, update and generally redo our website. With more Sign Magic Workshops scheduled next year, lots of new work and new ideas of course , redoing the website is simply necessary. Doing so brings new faces to our website which helps business too.

This time we changed things up in a substantial way. Some of the old is gone, with plenty of new taking its place. Instead of 80 short pages to click through there are only nine long ones instead that one has to scroll down to view.

It's my hope that the new website both promotes our work and also inspires others to do imaginative work of their own. 

For those inclined to take a look, please do so. I'd welcome your comments too.

www.imaginationcorporation.ca

-dan

Final pieces installed at MultiCam

Yesterday the last of the signs for the MultiCam project were installed. The fact is, in reality there will undoubtably be more signs to come. Like our studio here, we will continue to add more eye candy as time goes on and we discover more things. But for now this will officially bring the project to a close.

We considered lots of options for the way finding system for the rooms - fancy, plain and in between. In the end we opted for a consistent and somewhat conservative  look and feel. It's concise and professional with the familiar MultiCam 'M' present on every sign.We also decided to paint the backgrounds blue to match the window inserts. The letters, symbols and borders were painted silver to match the features in the entry.

The room signs were located over each door to minimize confusion as somme offices were adjacent with little space between. The signs are business like and blend in to the surroundings perfectly.

For the board room I simply had to give a visual clue to the dramatic theme room that lurks behind the doors. A starfish has somehow slithered outside and onto the sign.  

The MultiCam project has proved to be one of the most challenging and fun projects for our company in recent years. It was a wonderful opportunity to explore new methods and mediums and combine it all like never before. Sean Lawlor, the owner allowed us complete freedom as we worked. The builder, Jonathan Zerke and the team at Sonbuilt Homes, worked with us to make it all better than we could have done alone. Thank you for accommodating our needs through the project.

On this amazing project one of my personal challenges was to see how many times I could inject branding into the decor of the project. The 'M' and the brand MultiCam appear more than 100 times through the project. They are everywhere! The 'M' appears on corner blocks on trim, doors,windows, and stanchions around the machines. Medallions in the wainscot trim, beams and on smaller items like gauges in the board room. Our mission was to show the wonderful things the CNC machines and software were capable of. The end result is a project I proudly hang my hat on.

I felt from the very start that this opportunity was a game changer for our company. Amazingly, with the final pictures yet to be taken, the project is already garnering world wide attention. Undoubtably it will win some awards and be featured in many publications. It has already brought us projects that will be even more spectacular and imaginative. In short, it is working as designed (beyond expectations) for both us and our client. Thank you Sean for trusting us!

-dan