After many hours of trawling the internet I had managed to grab around 50 reference images. All of which covered multiple angles, distances, some were concept art, some were proper renders and some was even fan art (fan art can be great ref material). It's all invaluable reference material when creating the 3D model, so it's worth spending time and getting a lot of it. From there, I grabbed a notepad to make my plan of attack so that the model would be able to house the LEDs for the eye and the 2 elbows and I could get everything clear in my head.
I decided to make this a model that is locked in a pose rather than one that has any moving parts. The reason for this was that I was concerned slightly about the weight on the joints of the model, as some would be quite small and thin.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Crafts: Homemade Atlas from Portal
Monday, April 30, 2012
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Crafts: 8-Bit Wooden Wall Art
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Labels: 8-bit, crafts, merchandise, pac-man
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
DIY: CNC Table with Laser
If you're an artist who enjoys working in metal, you may find this tutorial on building your own laser-powered CNC cutting table interesting. The price of the components involved is probably well outside the budget of most starving artists, but it's still fun to fantasize about the possibilities.
This site provides the highlights for construction of a CNC table with a 250 watt laser used to cut sheet metal. It includes an overview of the system and a description of the laser, its optics and how the laser is controlled. The system also has an X-Y table with CNC software.
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Monday, March 19, 2012
Crafts: 8-Bit Cutting Boards
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Labels: 8-bit, crafts, mario, merchandise, pac-man, video games
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Crafts: Super Mario Bros 3 Quilts
These quilts were inspired by the old school Nintendo game, and as you can see, the medium lends itself to pixelated images. I’ve always wanted to cuddle with a goomba. This lap quilt measures 49 x 52 inches.
Posted by fathmy at 7:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: crafts, mario, quilt, video games
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Link Round-Up: March 13, 2012
These adorable Kawaii Starks are almost enough to make a fan boy squee. I can hardly wait for season two!News: Researchers in Italy say they may have found traces of a Leonardo Da Vinci work hidden under a Florentine fresco.
3D-Printer with Nano-Precision: Ultra-high-resolution 3D Printer Breaks Speed-Records at Vienna University of Technology.
Five Ways that Star Wars Counts as High Art
LED Wallpaper by Ingo Maurer
Nintendo Papercraft is a blog jam-packed with paper versions of your favorite classic Nintendo characters.
Old Book Illustrations are vintage pictures that were originally wood engravings or woodcuts, etchings or metal engravings. Old Book Art is pictures, drawings, maps and other images from antiquarian, public-domain books and other old documents.
Photographer Ondrej Pakan takes macro pictures of insects. Pakan's portfolio on 500px.
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Labels: crafts, cute, game of thrones, plush, round-up
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Crafts: Large Hadron Collider Quilts

Materials: Cottons, sheers and synthetics.

Materials: Silk, synthetic fabric, pvc fabric and sequins.
This piece is about scale–the vast Hadron Collider looking for infinitesimal particles. The eye was inspired by the shape of the framework holding up one part of the detector. The detector itself became the iris of the eye. I wanted a mini eye in the middle to suggest the scientists’ inward search for answers to the existence of our huge universe.

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Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Crafts: Droid Bird Houses
These awesomely geeky birdhouses are the creative product of one Ben Mayer, and his handmade birdhouse shop, NirdHaus. The R2-D2 birdhouse has been painted to look just like the little maintenance droid, and even has a functioning LED “optical unit” built into its facade. And if R2 isn’t enough for you, he’s accompanied by C-3PO – who just happens to be familiar with over 6 million varieties of bird calls.
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Monday, February 27, 2012
Link Round-Up: February 27, 2012

News: Lego ISS Built Aboard the Real One
Beautiful Life has posted a gallery of Remarkable Collection of Steampunk Sculptures
Rock You Like An Apocalypse: Art That Destroys The World!
The Shanty of Escape Games - Starting with Escape From The Smoking Room in November 2010, the Shanty Of Escape Games has published escape-the-room style short puzzle games with astonishing regularity, releasing at least two per month. Test your wits and escape from the Room with Baumkuchen, the Mansion with Traps, or the Mid-sized Banquet Hall!
Star Wars Re-imagined as Judy Blume Books
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Thursday, February 23, 2012
Crafts: Geometric Pencils Sculpture
This sculpture from Instructables is composed of seventy-two pencils, a load of super glue, and a couple of rubber bands. It was inspired by the geometric sculptures of George W. Hart and designed by geometry whiz Alejandro Erickson in an attempt to re-create Hart’s 72 Pencils.
…It took a couple of leisurely hours to build and glue, and with supervision was surprisingly easy to make. It can be assembled inexpensively using wooden pencils ($5.74 for 72), a few rubber bands and a little superglue, in pretty much exactly the same way as Alejandro makes his Hexastix sculptures… The hexagonal cross-section of the pencils make them a very natural fit for this geometric form, as the holes in the lattice are themselves hexagonal. The erasers are arranged tetrahedrally with respect to one another; the volume enclosed by the pencils is a rhombic dodecahedron.
Posted by fathmy at 6:00 AM 0 comments
Monday, February 20, 2012
Crafts: Three Cubes Colliding
Experimental kite designed by Sash Reading with Ivan Morison from the Studio 10 Arch at the University of Westminster. The kite was fabricated and engineered by Queen and Crawford. The kite features 1700 3d printed connectors, carbon fibre rods and cubenfibre aerospace fabric.
Posted by fathmy at 6:45 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Crafts: Duct Tape Rose
It's Valentine's Day! Panic! Flower prices are sky high, expectations are even higher, and the quality of sex you'll be receiving for the coming year hinges upon your ability to impress the depths of your devotion to your special girl. Well relax, here's a cheap but tactful way to express your love while also carrying across your geekiness. Instructables has an entire library of duct tape rose tutorials, but this one stands out as the best.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Video: Fire Drawings
"Fire Drawings" are fire art pieces in which elaborate designs slowly burned onto wood. The designs are etched into the wood panels, the etchings are filled with flammable paint, and then the paint is allowed to slowly burn (video). “Fire Drawings” are by London-based design company Studio Glithero.
The protagonist in the Fire Drawings is a flame. It travels through time over a path of flammable screen-printed paint, multiplying or merging together, drawing, leaving a decorative charcoal trace as it goes along.
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Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Link Round-Up: February 7, 2012
37 Minimalist Superheroes & Villains Posters by Bloop
Firefly cake with crew cupcakes and light-up Serenity.
Here's 5 free printable board games, including a Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who game. They're even more free if you use a printer at work.
Nothing says love like Chocolate Zombie Head Bon Bons with Cherry Brains
SF versions of famous artworks
What if LOTR characters were band instruments?
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Labels: crafts, round-up, valentines
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Crafts: Geeky Cross Stitch
An expert stichstress, Caroline is adept at recreating classic gaming scenes scenes, TV and film quotes, and just general geekery in tiny little X’s. View tons more at her Flickr.
A little something I stitched up for my good pals Andrea & James (as they named their kitties after these awesome Simpsons aliens). I felt it was appropriate.
The FFFoF theme this go round was "IT'S NOT THE END OF THE WORLD" so I went with my own person assumption of what may or may not be the downfall of humanity. Are you prepared?
The quote is from YA genre novel "Hollowland" and the zombie is inspired by a cute little animated gif I found ages ago. :)
Possibly the best line spoken by any character in Deathly Hallows. At the midnight premiere I attended, you could feel the entire theatre edging forward on their seats in anticipation when we saw Mrs. Weasley fighting Bellatrix Lestrange, and cheered louder at that than even the Ron/Hermione kiss.
Being the last midnight show, I knew that moments like that were really over. Stitched in the obvious Gryffindor colours, and I hope the border suggests the scarves that so many people around me were wearing. I'll miss this fandom a lot.
So, okay, ClandestineIndustries.com are one of my favourite band-related clothing companies. This was a design on a t-shirt from a few years back and I didn't buy it when I had the chance! It still makes me laugh when I think of it, though, so I shamelessly appropriated it into a very quick stitch.
I have a feeling Pete Wentz will never see this, so I'm not too worried about completely ripping off an old shirt from his clothing line for my own amusement.
If you're unfamiliar with the subject of this stitch, and are amused by gloriously repetitive songs and videos, please turn your speakers up and enjoy the wonder that is Nyan Cat! There are also several fun little flash games you can play with Nyan Cat as the star, just google 'em (but only if you've got time to kill!)
Obviously I take no credit in the design with this one (see here for the history of Nyan Cat), other than the time I took to pause the video a few times and plot it out in PC Stitch in the window opposite.
My problem is that when I see any pixellated image, my first inclination is "I should probably stitch that". It was honestly just a matter of time before I got to Nyan Cat, but I was already on a fabric dying kick from my Natalie Dee Koala piece on teal, so here we have a second try, this time with navy. Looks pretty good, although perhaps a shade darker than I'd planned.
Anyway, cute, eh?
I've been meaning to stitch a TARDIS for awhile, and dudes, I didn't realize how many shades of blue I had in my floss stash until I started plotting it out! Also, the perspective is totally off. I wasn't exactly doing the math.
Don't judge me for using an 11th Doctor quote with the slightly earlier TARDIS design!
Can't wait to keep making more of these old-timey intertitle cards!
I plan on getting more and more ridiculously elaborate with the curlicues and decorations, and trying out different fonts/alphabets. The hard part is nailing down which quotes I want to use!
Being huge fans of the comics and the movie, we were intensely excited for the beat-'em-up xbox game. And hey, I can't look at anything pixellated without wanting to stitch it... so I did!
Screwed up on my counting somewhere on his arm, but was too lazy to rip out the stitches so I just worked around it. Sometimes you just have to deal with mistakes. You know, in case you thought it looked a little wonky.
In early '99 I beat the Ocarina of Time / I'm quite the legend in this town...
I don't take credit for the design of Link-- I admit that I completely ripped him off another sweet Ocarina-themed stitch I saw on spritestitch, and created a new pattern around him. Check out the original here, because it's very cute.
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Labels: crafts, cross stitching, video games
Monday, January 30, 2012
Crafts: BioShock Crochet
This amazingly well done crochet is sadly not for sale. But maybe if you throw enough money at this talented BioShock fan they’ll make you one.
Posted by fathmy at 5:30 AM 0 comments
Labels: bioshock, crafts, video games
Friday, January 27, 2012
Video: I Built a Tardis
Watch a cute girl build a life-size replica of Doctor Who's TARDIS. I’m pretty sure her TARDIS isn’t bigger on the inside. It is however a pretty accurate recreation of the exterior, right down to the lights.
Posted by fathmy at 5:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: crafts, doctor who, video
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Crafts: Space Invader Cheese Board
Made from birch and black walnut, and finished with food-grade mineral oil and beeswax. Available for US$60 at Etsy.
Posted by fathmy at 2:30 PM 0 comments
Labels: crafts, space invaders
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Crafts: Loomi Light
Loomi is a modular, makeable, paintable, recyclable light that looks beautiful just about anywhere. The paper lamp is made up of interlinking quadrilaterals that easily connect to create shapes of all shapes and sizes. Download the instructions to build yours.
Posted by fathmy at 10:00 AM 0 comments
Labels: crafts, lights, papercraft, tutorial











































