I love Tamiya Tanks. At one time I had quite a big diorama. A local hobby shop purchased it from me and had it displayed for around 8 years.
Now, are you talking about the original illustration of the Tamiya box cover, or the box cover you get with the model? Would you seriously compare the paper bicycle in question to the art work you just mentioned? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and there is a lot of art that I don't like, but i know it's art. That is not what was being addressed at all. That little bike in my opinion is not art, it is a craft. It is a model, an O.K. one, not as detailed as many I have seen (even on this forum). Is Shinichi Iwami at artist, probably so, I'd have to see more of his work. If this was all he did, then no. Having been to your website and seen your work, in my opinion, you are an artist (damn good one too, who paints stuff that I like I might ad)
.
I still never ventured off into any of the tangents that some posted. I stated, specifically, that bike is overpriced at $38.95 and for something that is mass produced, is not justified. When the question of the expense of lasers came into play. I addressed it. As far as design goes, that is is a very little bit of time in Rhino, and with the CAM plug ins, a breeze to manufacture, scale up etc. I know you work with Rhino, I do not know if you have any CNC, CAM, experience. That is a field I spent many years in.
If that bike is art, then the bulkheads flying around in all of the CH53E helicopters and UH60 Blackhawks and S76 Helicopters that I programmed and made from raw ingots of Aluminum are works of art. All the rotor components that I wrote the programs for and made from blocks of forged titanium would be art. All the fixtures and tooling I designed out of my head for those 100's of parts would be art. They are not.
If a guy makes a work of art from the helicopter in battle, representing a situation, it could be art. Then again, I have seen incredible technical hand draw illustrations that really are technical masterpieces, but not art. That is why Architectural drawings generally are not considered art. The design of the building itself may be. A Frank Lloyd Wright drawing of any kind is worth a fortune because his buildings were works of art. Finally, you get into grey areas of what to call what, but this has nothing to do with value. You made a leap there. Illustrations from magazines and as to whether they are not are not art has nothing to do with the inherent value of the object. Value is whatever people are willing to pay. Some people pay a lot for art that then goes down quite a bit in value, and the opposite is also true. It is a non issue.
That bike is not worth $38.95, it is not art, it is an expensive, simple paper model. This statement has nothing to do with what you or others may attach to it. It is a simple statement.
I, after observing the 1000's of models produced for sale and for free,
think it is extremely overpriced and simplistic, no matter how much the machine cost to produce it. Incidentally, when you work on something, (as in machining a bracket for someone's race car) you never count machine time, you count total time. The end result is what matters, otherwise, competition would never be an issue. "That American car is worth more than that German car because the machines cost a lot to make it". I don't think so.