Builds by Damraska

[Damraska]

Alas, my skills have definitely fallen far. I just put the ModelArt Ju 87G in the recycle can. It was a tough, tough model and about 150 hours in, with all major assemblies done and about 40 detail parts left to go, I could not successfully mate the wings to the fuselage. This greatly saddens me because it was the model that excited me enough to purchase a good printer and return to card modeling. However, I must realistically assess my situation and admit when I am not up to the task. Thank goodness I had the foresight not to start another dead end build thread.

I really miss the days when I could succeed with just about any card model. Putting two out of every three models into the recycle can makes it really difficult to stay motivated. Thank you to all the great builders who post pictures of their beautiful models.

[Damraska]

I finished something! Yay!

This model was conceived as a way to help me learn how to drive Inkscape and took many months to draw because I am sllloooooowwwwwwwww and kept redesigning every single stupid part. It is based on a gaming miniature I invented as a kid. As I recall, I designed and built the original in, like, a few hours. :/

No three dimensional modeling program was used because, when I started the project, I did not have one!

This ship is named Deep Sea Research Ship Tribute to the Goddess of Knowledge. At 1/1000 scale the ship measures about 31 centimeters in length, making it about the size of a supercarrier operated by the United States of America. The fore section comprises crew quarters, a spacious hanger, research equipment, and sensors. The aft section houses a huge Tokamak reactor measuring about 100 feet in diameter, fuel storage tanks, and the combustion chamber for a plasma drive. The spine includes three segments allowing the ship to mate up with other vessels or storage containers. The crew consists of aquatic beings so the vessel does not require any spun sections for artificial gravity. The gigantic sensor panels were inspired by the billboard RADAR systems used on vessels like U.S.S. Enterprise and U.S.S. Longbeach. The shape of the vessel, a three faceted pyramid, is extremely stealthy by intention as the beings operating the ship wish to observe without themselves being detected. I then completely threw away the stealth aspect when I designed the spine. :/ At some point I really need to fix that.





Fun Fact: If you look in front of the main billboard sensor you can see the name of the ship in red on white text. Yes, I invented (six characters of) a language so the model would look more realistic. :o Is it any wonder I rarely finish anything?

Anyway, the next version, designed in Blender, will revise the shape to look more...urr...shapely. Yes.

[chaparral2d]

Really nice builds! Very clean and precise.

Dave

[Damraska]

Originally Posted by chaparral2d

Really nice builds! Very clean and precise.

Dave

Thank you! It feels nice to complete a few things after so many years of sickness.

[Damraska]

So, back in September I resolved to design and build some Christmas ornaments, mostly as a training exercise, partly as an alternative to sculpting, and as a way to complete fun, quick projects. I spend most of my card modeling time building 1:33 scale aircraft that never get done. My usual pattern is to work pretty hard for two or three weeks, dabble for another month or two, then put the incomplete model in a box.

The first order of business was designing a simple globe model in Blender. For those who do not know, Blender is a completely free but very powerful program for designing three dimensional art. While intended for animation work, it makes a decent platform for Computer Assisted Drafting.

Most card model ornaments use a small number of lemon wedge shaped petals, perhaps 6 to 12. For my ornament, I decided to use conic sections assembled in the manner of most card model aircraft. The globe for my ornament project consists of 12 horizontal slices and 60 vertical slices for a total of 720 facets.

Shortly before my ornament project began, phuocdh released a free, web based utility called PaperMaker. This utility allows the user to slice up and unfold three dimensional drawings in .stl format. Papermaker thus became my utility of choice for slicing up ornament designs.

After slicing up the globe in PaperMaker I imported it into Inkscape, a completely free vector drawing utility. Inkscape provides most of the functions of Corel Draw or Illustrator at none of the cost. Once in Inkscape I redrew every piece with perfect curves. Next, I added lines subdividing every piece into eighths. Finally, I started adding some simple artwork.

Test Ornament 1 was painted with simple stripes at 80mm in diameter. Construction revealed a minor drawing flaw so the ornament was recycled.

Test Ornament 2 was also painted in simple stripes at 60mm in diameter. Building half the ornament revealed some very small fit problems. Eventually, I finished this ornament.

Test Ornament 3 was painted with snowflakes. This required breaking each piece into 8 equal sections. The test build revealed new fit problems. Eventually, I realized that line thickness attributes were increasing part size just enough to throw things off.



Test Ornament 4 was painted to match an ornament I saw in Hobby Lobby. It incorporates much improved connecting strips and corrections to line thickness.



Test Ornament 5 was decorated using dot mandala painting techniques. This proved an interesting challenge, getting everything to line up correctly.



So far, I consider this project a great success. I can now design and finish a new ornament in two or three days. Every time I strive to reproduce a new style of artwork in Inkscape, I end up learning more about that program. Finally, I learned a great deal about designing card models from these simple efforts.

[Damraska]

I think Blender was designed as a torture device by someone who hates my guts.

In Blender, no one can hear you scream...

:o

[wireandpaper]

Originally Posted by Damraska

Test Ornament 1 was painted with simple stripes at 80mm in diameter. Construction revealed a minor drawing flaw so the ornament was recycled.

Test Ornament 2 was also painted in simple stripes at 60mm in diameter. Building half the ornament revealed some very small fit problems. Eventually, I finished this ornament.

Test Ornament 3 was painted with snowflakes. This required breaking each piece into 8 equal sections. The test build revealed new fit problems. Eventually, I realized that line thickness attributes were increasing part size just enough to throw things off.



Test Ornament 4 was painted to match an ornament I saw in Hobby Lobby. It incorporates much improved connecting strips and corrections to line thickness.



Test Ornament 5 was decorated using dot mandala painting techniques. This proved an interesting challenge, getting everything to line up correctly.



So far, I consider this project a great success. I can now design and finish a new ornament in two or three days. Every time I strive to reproduce a new style of artwork in Inkscape, I end up learning more about that program. Finally, I learned a great deal about designing card models from these simple efforts.

Hi Damraska:
Consider sending your ornaments to Rick's event:
Christmas Decoration Event

BTW very nice 109s!

[Mike1158]

So far, I consider this project a great success. I can now design and finish a new ornament in two or three days. Every time I strive to reproduce a new style of artwork in Inkscape, I end up learning more about that program. Finally, I learned a great deal about designing card models from these simple efforts.

They are bloody marvelous, nicely done, Sir.

[Damraska]

Thank you, gentlemen! I will add the newer ornaments to the Christmas event thread.

Writing of new ornaments, here's one now! I needed to take a break from Mortal Combat with Blender(TM). This bulb represents an improved version of bulb 3 with all design improvements and darker bands so the snowflakes actually show up. Unlike the previous bulbs, this one received a clear coat before construction. Currently, I cannot easily span a complex graphic across multiple parts so ... small snowflakes.