Lambandi Project: An exercise in smoothosification...

What an amazing result from what started as lunch-time pipe-dreams.

When I used to live in Berkeley, Raffi Minasian and I would meet that the Taqueria near my place and have Carnitas! Over lunches we'd discuss design projects that we would maybe enjoy working on. One day we decided to begin one of these such projects. It wasn't the Lambandi, actually, it was the Ferrari Ibrido concept car. This Ferrari "Hybrid" was the subject of an article in Forza Magazine, which discussed how Ferrari might go about developing a hybrid model of car, and yet stay true to their roots (there were a lot of purists out there that don't think a ferrari could be anything other than a 12 cylinder monster, but... they've proven otherwise, and we weren't that far off the mark!) But that's another story (you can see a teaser for the Forza article online here at Veloce Today Online

Final Center-Fold Rendering for the Article (Ibrido v510)

Back to the Lambandi. Raffi has a wonderful way of weaving intricate background stories and historical tidbits that, when incorporated with a final design, deliver so much more than just plausibility, they give credibility to a fantasy project. The Lambandi is now a die cast model at the franklin mint. You can actually BUY one of them. They're gorgeous! And to think, this all began as a pipe dream over a delicious meal of Carnitas Tacos at a Taqueria! --- seriously, THE BEST Carnitas EVER! hmm... perhaps that's the reason for the great inspiracion!

1965-Lambandi-Mark-II-Signed-Limited-Edition--P9850

http://www.franklinmint.com/1965-Lambandi-Mark-II-Signed-Limited-Edition--P9850.aspx

Here's the LAMBANDI! Isn't She SWEET! (Modeled in Maya, detailed in Pro/E and Manufactured at the Franklin Mint!)

Go buy one! Click Here for the Product Page

Quote from: Hardware show offers ideas for Dad's day | detnews.com | The Detroit News

Hardware show offers ideas for Dad's day | detnews.com | The Detroit News: "• One of the most unique products I saw at the show was the Hawk from Bird-B-Gone, (800) 392-6915, www.birdbgone. com. The Bird-B-Gone Hawk is the first red-tailed hawk decoy on the market that helps keep both unwanted birds and rodents away from your house, deck or garden. Often, people would use owl decoys in their garden, but owls are nocturnal predators, and many birds and rodents don't have a fear of owls. Because hawks are natural predators that hunt during the day, birds and rodents identify the hawk as a dangerous predator and will leave the area. The decoy is made of heavy-duty plastic, and has hand painted life-like features. It will soon be available at lawn and garden and hardware stores nationwide, with a suggested retail price of $15."

Bird B Gone: Press Release for new Red Hawk Decoy...

It's always exciting when a new product I've worked on is released. And this one is no exception, but is exceptional!


The project: Sculpt a bird of prey that will be manufactured as a visual bird deterrent.


The project was exciting for a number of reasons. Free-form organic objects are great... not many people can accomplish them as CAD models, and the complexity of this one was really high. In fact it stretched the demands of my CAD workstations to it's very limits.


Traditionally a product like this is simply sculpted as a master. Which, if the initial pass at it is exactly what the client wants, or at least the right proportions, then there's no problem. However, what if you wanted to stretch it, or re-ballance it. These things are much harder to do on a hard physical model. However, in Maya, there are these things called "deformers" which, essentially, allow you to re-shape the whole model, or bits and pieces. So by going digital, we had opportunities to try out different scowls and proportions really quickly and with highly realistic details maintained.


Of course, the 2.8M polygon model which was the end result of the sculpting was about as unwieldy as you can get in maya! so I had to figure out a way to manipulate a low resolution version and bring back up all the details so that any editing I did to the positions or body parts, or changing the head turn etc, would all be replicated down through the chain - as well as maintaining the color texture map which was another critical component.


The other reason for doing this sculpt digitally is that, in the end, the client (Bird B Gone) had more control over the end result. Which turned out great!


This was, in fact, the second Bird of Prey that we went with. The first was an Owl, but... instead of going with the "typical" I think they were after something more unique and agressive!


Check out the press release here:
New Red Hawk Decoy Press Release



Image of Red Hawk Decoy


The manufacturer did a really wonderful job replicating all the fine digital details that I spent hours sculpting in Maya using displacement maps and sculpting areas by hand.


In the end, I needed to bring the model into proEngineer Wildfire, so that I could add the engineering details, like thickness and feet-bumps as well as the hanger loop on top. Since the maya sculpt was done in polygons, I actually wrote my own code to translate the 2.8M Polygone Maya model into a nurbs surface so that I could then bring into proengineer and detail out these details.


At some point I'm going to have to post the final images I delivered just to show how well these guys did!


The actual product isn't yet up on their website, but as soon as it is, I'll post a link there. :)


Thanks for reading!

flowlight: A "light-pixel" Designed for flowtoys!

A few years ago, I was learning how to spin poi (more on that some other time :) ) and I met a couple of really amazing and wonderful people; Sean and Prisna of flowtoys. I had been toying with the idea of designing my own poi, as the available products on the market were merely cludged together watch-battery driven leds in some re-purposed padded case.

When I met Prisna we began discussing poi and when I mentioned my interest in designing something that used a aaa battery that could use standard sized rechargeable batteries. She immediately introduced me to Sean, and said "you two need to talk!"

Sean had been building toys, some of the best on the market to date. Still the products were constructed from available parts and repurposed products. He had never been fully satisfied with what was "available" and been dreaming of building his own "light pixels" for use in their products.

Thus began an amazing project, and a wonderful friendship. We have been working together ever since, designing, and producing, several products for the flowtoys line of toys.

The flowlight is the flagship of this collaboration. Sean's extensive knowledge of spinning and great relationship with the spinning community and my almost 15 years of designing products allowed us to put together a product that is world class. The flowlight is incredibly durable, (I should post a link to Sean demonstrating - violently - how tough these things are) bright, with a beautiful organic design that works with the needs of the end user, and satisfied our desire to contribute an artful object to the world of 'things'.

rendered image of the final concept for the flowlight.

It is now going in to it's 3rd generation of production, and we're very excited by the positive reception it's been getting. Check it out on flowtoy's web site flowlight product page

Go buy some of their products. You'll be supporting a wonderful couple and their efforts to bring high quality fun products to the world! Of course they're fun to play with too.

What is Synthetic Nature

We strive to conrol the world around us. Our control is limited only by our tools and our understanding of our tools and the world we are trying to contol. As we become more thorough in our understanding of this world, and more sophisticated in the development of our tools, the limitations become diminished and our designs move toward ideal. The forms we most appreciate are forms that remind us of the good parts of who we are. The forms we most desire are those that remind us that we are alive, and vital.

Synthetic Nature is my philosophy for design... it is how I interact with the world. Analyzig and responding; Synthesizing ideas and physical manifestations of htose ideas, that recognize our physiology and our beauty.

Welcome to my ideasphere.