There are fantastic build blogs of people re-creating Daft Punk helmets. They inspired me to create my own take on the helmets. My idea was to mash it up with Halloween. Make it,"Daft Punk meets the headless horseman". The led display could be in the mouth and eyes. The led eyes could snap between a few different expressions, like Eve from Wall-e, and the mouth could play 8-bit style animations of candle flames, hypnotic spirals or fire. I modeled my concept in maya and, while I kept the head model simple, I indulged in some hand-modeled wrinkles.
I wanted to see what the helmet would look like as a physical model, so I exported the helmet into a program called Pepekura. Pepekura allows you to break your model into pieces and print it out at scale on card-stock.
Then you can cut out each of the thousands of sections by hand as you slowly lose your grip on reality.
Fun fact: time has no meaning. X-acto knives, hot glue guns and hand cramps are all that exist.
Reality is a lie. There is only a vague sense of now. You are one with the universe, and the universe is made up of card stock.
Sorry, I think I just had a flashback there. So, I finished the assembly and learned 2 important lessons:
1. My resolution (size of each square) was far too large to support a smooth, round shape.
2. Large Pepekura models need internal supports to prevent warping.
I reprinted a single section at a much higher resolution and and added supports. It was so intricate it took nearly as long to assemble as the entire first pass of the head. I then coated it with autobody filler and sanded it smooth.
Perfect! Now just 11 more to go...
No comments:
Post a Comment