Digital Ariadne

Now Ariadne is in the digital world. I’ve took the wax model to a lab of Toyama Design Center to digitize it. It’s an organization of Toyama pref. They have various expensive industrial machines for rental. It’s amazing I can rent a 3D digitizer just paying reasonable fee per hour. Toyama is an ideal place for artists like me. The picture above is the result of the test rendering with several surface textures.

It projects numbers of moyres on the model and calculate the shape by  the interference of the moyre pictures.

The digitizing process is done very manually, just like doing some craft as this machine is not made for this purpose originally but for inspecting industrial metal molds. I took data by every two square inches and store the data into the system till it gets enough to create a whole digital model . This is the operation monitor. You can see the moyre used for the calculation.

And the data was processed and polygonized. After reducing polygons, it was converted into object file to be imported into LightWave. It’s something never be made by any of  present modeling software. I always thought  ”WTF! I could model far better and faster with clay!! I hate computers!” as modeling Jeala or Golem.

But with this kind of mesh, it’s not good and convenient to make her laugh or talk. I have to kill the polygons and connect the points again for animation purpose for smooth movement. So three-D digitizing is not a miracle to solve all problems!

=Reiko

Kiln loading completed

My assistant Fujita is rolling the silicon mould to get the wax stick to the wall evenly. It  weights 18 lbs. in total. I can’t roll it by myself.

And wait till it will harden.

The moulds. There are 19 moulds in total. I sift color powders and stack small color glass cullets just like stacking small stones on the river bank till I fill them up to the edge, drawing the patterns with them, thinking about how gravity and heat will affect them. It took whole four hours to load the glass! I missed my lunch today.

Then I loaded them in the big kiln (1 square meter). Now the kiln is set to 200℃, about 392°F to get the moisture out of moulds. I raise the temperature tomorrow morning.

-Reiko

Silicon mould making and the kerosene stoves

I decided to make it in four parts. Silicon mould making takes time, especially when it’s cold it takes very long to harden. So I cut and cleaned the wicks of my old stoves to use them again to get the room warm for silicon moulds. By the way, I was very happy that I could paste up this part with plaster very well. As silicon rubber is expensive, I paste silicon in thin layers and make the plaster backup to save silicon.

The first one is about 15 years old. The manufacturer is originally a ship lantern maker. It used to shine like gold as it’s all made from brass. I like this type old kerosene stove because I like to watch flame dancing. It’s very soothing.  I use electric heater in my new home, so this stove has been sleeping for years. It’s nice to use it again.

It’s over 30 years old. It’s called Sweden Pod. This is my favorite thing too. It’s very stable and safe with the stand and cover. Also it’s still  stylish.

And the best thing of it is you can bake potato inside above the fire. My mother used to make baked potato with it in my childhood. It was so nice, smell and taste.

I like the life having a bare fire in the house. I want to live like Tasha Tudor. Electric heating is nice to have but absolutely boring. I use gas cooking table but provided I use an electric one, there would be no fire in the house. I believe living without the fire will lead human being to the animal state again.

=Reiko

Ariadne model

Finally I’ve done the modeling and put it on the pedestal. Now I’m making moulds of Daedalus mask. I ordered color glass for kiln casting which will take place on 25th, today I have to decide the part line and make silicon mould! It’s the most difficult part of this project. Till I finish to prepare moulds, I don’t have time to work in the virtual world… Anyways, more news is coming from the real world. Stay tuned.

-Reiko

It’s cold here…

Last night it was -1℃ in Toyama, that is about 30°F. And the wicks of the old kerosene stoves(over 30 years old)  in my studio are shorten and they were emitting black soot. I was forced to turn them off as I got sick a little.

So it’s cold here! But nonetheless it’s nice to work here. I still carve Ariadne, put some plaster on, then carve,  put a little on, and carve.

I made 5 Daedalus mask moulds and I’m gonna make six more. I’ve reserved a big kiln at the end of January so I got my pants on fire! The blue masks are wax model which are waiting for plaster.

Meanwhile, I made a model for the small mask for the test of Daedalus mask texture. It will be a small tiger mask. The skull is Ralphy, a good friend of mine, who is not sick at all.

For the virtual world, I created two islands in the MD playfield. They are the greek cliffs and shores.

-Reiko

Mad Daedalus play field design

Hi guys, we wish you the best luck for the new year!

I’m still working on the lighting, but the play field design has been almost done. Here is a part of it which is mapped on the play field board.

I’m going to drill holes for lights, then put faceted or plain plastic transparent light covers in them. Of course, they are virtual stuff.

But before making lights, I should model Ariadne shrines and the Minos King Palace and other buildings for islands. Lots of works!

-Reiko

Minotaur in progress

These pictures show the process how I design the characters in the game graphics.

Now the fourth Minotaur is placed in the best place of the playfield.

I’m adjusting the lighting for the rendering at the moment. Lighting in 3D computer graphic rendering is as critical as the one for photo shooting in the real world. It changes the image completely.

Therefore, it’s a big time-consumer.

-Reiko

Daedalus mask

This is a plaster model of Daedalus mask. Today I’m gonna make a silicon mold to make a wax model.

Frowning Daedalus and Smiling Daedalus are now covered by silicon gum. I always enjoy to see the mat surface of the plaster model turning into something different with the shiny surface of wet silicon.

-Reiko

Ariadne for playfield

Here is the draft of Ariadne. Today I traced the contours of it to paint it on Macintosh, then scanned it to be layout on the playfield along with other illustrations. Now Playfield design is having its best part!

In the meantime, I was learning how to use facebook. It’s not so easy to use, isn’t it? I opened an account sometime ago and left it untouched as I didn’t find out how to deal with it instantly. Anyway I’ve found some friends, some of them are really old ones. Without this tool, it would be impossible to get in touch with them again.

I opened an acocunt in LinkedIn too as a friend who I couldn’t find in facebook was there. However, why is it so hard to find people in that kind of stuff? If their names are common, 500 people will be displayed. No way! There was no search condition setting options. It’s so inconvenient! Mail address doesn’t work at all. No way to know which address they used to sign up. And nobody had email address 20 years ago though it’s unbelievable now!

Here is a larger version of Ariadne on the request of a beautiful lady. I hope you enjoy it too if you like the above picture.

You can download the picture from the following link for free and you may use it for non-commercial personal use only. You may not change the image as it is protected by the copyright law. If you wish to distribute the printed image or via other media, or upload the data in networks , you must put copyright notice as follows. 2009 © Reiko F. Nojima, LittleWing Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Ariadne draft (jpg file, 1.3MB)

-Reiko

King Minos

This is a draft of King Minos. He’s a son of Zeus and Europa. He ordered Daedalus to create bio weapon Minotaur, and built the Labyrinth to confine him.

-Reiko