Exploratorium Webcast: Toys

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Open Make show this weekend at the Exploratorium! And if you missed it, here is the webcast, where I talked about my steam and electric robots hobby, and Skylanders toys for work. My son wanted to be up there with me. Somebody needed a nap! So instead of being a distraction, I just brought him to the stage. He was totally happy just being up there with me, I guess he didn't get my stage fright genes! Anyway, enjoy the webcast, I was the second speaker, about 16 minutes in, but I strongly recommend watching the whole thing from start to end. Update, the Exploratorium had just uploaded video of my section only, shown below. However, I'd still recommend to check out the entire webcast!

Not only was it an honor to be part of Open Make and the Exploratorium, but it was great to meet the amazing toy makers.

Also, some of my steam powered and electric robots, are on display in the tinkering studio for the next couple of weeks: Steam powered R2, Steam Walker, Steam Centipede, Steam Turtle, couple of the Swashbots, and the Putterbot:

Exploratorium & One of Swords

Sorry for the late post.... first, I was interviewed by One of Swords (about 24 mins in). And I'll be at the Exploratorium this Saturday: http://tinkering.exploratorium.edu/open-make-toys/

The Exploratorium will be displaying many of my steam creations, as well as the electric critters. I will also be bringing some prototype skylander toys, and some really early hand sculpts, molds, casts etc. I will try to bring all of the Skylanders, including yet to be released if people wanted to see what they will look like :) I'll probably be there most of the day, the interview is between 1pm-2pm.

Leviathan taxidermy sculpt (Skylanders)

Here is a sculpt of the giant fish from Skylanders. He hangs like a taxidermy fish at my desk at work :) This video shows the process that I used:



I used aluminum foil to shape the general shape and size first. This is to help the Sculpey clay to have an even thickness, otherwise the inside of the fish will never cook before the outside is fully baked. Once I had a base, I just sculpted the fish, adding more detail as I went along. The teeth are made from Shapelock, as small sculpey teeth would break easily.

After making the teeth, I simply inserted them into the unbaked fish's mouth to make the teeth sockets. Some details were made by imprinting patterns onto the surface of the soft clay.



I then baked the fish, and used Shapelock under the fins to help support them. I painted the fish with acrylic paint.... the cheap stuff that's made for crafts/kids, which are thicker than model acrylic paint. Plus they are super cheap, a dozen colors for a few bucks.

My son also joined me for a while, painting his dinosaurs alongside me, as seen in the video, which was a really amazing experience for me. I added some gloss to the mouth/eyes, and glued the them into place. Last step was to stain the wood plague and epoxy the fish into his permanent home.

It was fun making this thing. The Leviathan fish was something that I had designed and modeled for Skylanders, but you only see him for a second in the game, so it's nice to show him off as a trophy fish :)

TIME For Kids interview

A little while back, I had an interview with TIME for Kids about what I did for Skylanders. Here is the article!

http://www.timeforkids.com/news/creating-skylanders/24012

Skylanders on SketchBook News

I'm on SketchBook news, showing some Skylanders concept art and prototype toys!

http://www.sketchbooknews.com/news/skylanders.html

Inkling Review Followup

Recently, I posted a blog & video review for the Wacom Iinkling. The video was made after I've done a handful of quick sketches and tests. The result were pretty good, although not perfect. But after another week of use, the overall results are rather finicky and unpredictable.  

Inkling example on a good day.... these lines
were fairly accurate.

The product looks and feels really nice, but the technology is just not consistent enough. To test  and improve the accuracy, I've tested it on an normal sketchbook, and compared it to the inkling and the paper taped onto the table. Below are experiments to see if the paper and device movement is the problem for the inaccuracy. I drew the grid first, then filled each box with a circle, one row at a time from top to bottom. Then I added an triangle to each, then crossed the circles. Lastly I drew an X on the top of each triangle, roughly connecting the sides of the triangle. This is to see if accuracy is an issue coming back to a specific spot, after using on parts far from the previous spot. The results were the taped version was better, but still inconsistent and can be off. See bottom rows of each, and you can see that the further the worse the accuracy gets. These are roughly 8x5 papers.... any bigger than this, the lines will be pretty consistently bad.

used on a regular hard cover sketch book, and
used as intended - sitting on the couch just
drawing without moving the sketch book too
much. Results can be pretty off, not many
of the X's match up to the triangles. inaccuracies
gets worse, the further from the device,
see how bad it is on row 8.

Inkling and paper taped onto a table, to insure
that nothing moves. The inaccuracy is still
present, but not nearly as bad as using on a
sketchbook. See the inaccuracies on 5A, 6A, 8D etc.

If these inaccurate lines happens to be on the important parts of your drawing, such as face and eyes, that just sucks, as a millimeter off can change the expression completely. At $200 price tag, it's a bit hard to justify something that isn't working perfectly. The inkling was marketed to clip onto a sketch book, but it really is better when used on a non-moving surface. So it's not the portable device that it promises to be. When you're sketching on the sketchpad, you can see the inkling bouncing around, no wonder it's got accuracy issues. I started to use a clipboard with the inkling and sketchbook.... but this defeats the whole purpose of the inkling.


I was fairly happy after a handful of good drawing came out of the initial tests. But the next dozen drawing were so off, that not many were really worth salvaging. At this point, I can only hope that next version would be more reliable and can be something truly a portable digital/traditional device. What I think Wacom should have done, is to use their normal positioning technology, and just sell a clip board that you clip any paper to. The clipboard is just a normal Wacom tablet that tracks the pen's position, and records your ink lines like the inkling, but with the accuracy of Wacom's tablets. 


On a side note, if anyone is wondering about refills... I found these pen refills at Staples, they are a dollar or two a pop, and work well with the inkling. The ink and feel is about the same as the ones that ships with the Inkling. 

Inkling Refills

Wacom Inkling Review, Problems and Solutions

Disclaimer: I'm a Wacom fanboy. I'm an also a SketchBook Pro fanatic. Neither one asked me to do this review.... no matter how many times I've begged. So now that's out of the way, let's get to this Inkling business.

Wacom Inkling took the digital art world by storm when it was announced in August. I pre ordered it as soon as I saw it.. After months of delays, I finally got my hands on one. Here is my video review:

I preordered the Inkling as soon as I saw it. If it was another hardware company, I don't think I would have pull the trigger so eagerly. Wacom understand artists, and the inkling's hardware is what I had expected, but the software is a real poop on a stick.  Most of my complaints about the Inkling is in the software, so hopefully Wacom will address these buggy issues soon with updates.

Hardware Pros:
-Great design package.
-Can use standard pen refills
-Pen is very good, I've never used this type of ballpoint pen to sketch, I love it!
-Can be used as an input device for your computer

Hardware Cons:
-The pen took forever to charge, and after a few uses, it seems to be staying in the red longer and longer.
-It's not completely accurate, hope that this can be improved in the future.
-Inkling clip is very small. When touching the new layer button, it can shift the device a bit, and offset the layer. Even just drawing in the sketchbook, your pen seems to bounce the device around a bit.

Sketch Manager problems:

-Missing SketchBook Pro icon, when SketchBook Pro is purchased through the Mac app store.
-When exporting to SketchBook Pro, the lines are completely jittery.
-Within Sketch Manager, the lines have verying width based on pressure, but no opacity levels.
-Can not render a Speed Drawing video.
-UI is not very intuitive, just feel buggy overall.

SketchBook Pro bonuses:
-Can open WPI files directly!!!Thanks Chris Cheung at Autodesk for telling me about this!
-Uses default canvas size, so can generate a huge images from inkling data.
-Uses last used brush and color, can generate your drawing with SketchBook's beautiful lines, and reproduce something very similar to the original pen sketch on paper.

Here are some examples:

Problem: export from Wacom Sketch Manager,
super wiggly lines

Solution: Open the same WPI file from
 SketchBook Pro shows much better results

Digital files examples:

Sketch of Arbo from Skylanders

Test Sketch generated by Inkling

Sketch from above, colored in SketchBook Pro

Photos for comparison:

Bottom line, Wacom Inkling + Autodesk Sketchbook Pro = killer combination. It allows pure digital artists like myself to fall in love with real pen and paper again. I love having a piece of paper that I call an "original", yet flexible enough for me to work digitally. Inkling by itself with the current Sketch Manager software, is a fun little toy. At $200 a pop for the Inkling, you really want much more than a gimmicky toy....  But InklingBook Pro is a real artist tool, I'm looking forward to using more of it.

Wacom Inkling    &    Autodesk SketchBook Pro

Titanoboa, 50ft Electromechanical Snake

My friend Leigh Christie is at it again. A few years ago, he and his team built the Mondo Spider, based off of the Mechanical Spider linkage design. It was about the coolest thing ever, amazing feat of both engineering and art. So what does one do after building a personal, rideable, giant spider mech? A giant robotic snake of course! This 50 foot monster, appropriately named Titanoboa, is a thing of beauty. Check out the video of the Titanoboa and Mondo Spider in action:





For more information about Titanboa, check out: http://titanoboa.ca/
And more about the Mondo Spider: http://www.mondospider.com/ and Joe Klann's Mechanical Spider mechanism: http://mechanicalspider.com/

Me and the boy on the Mondo Spider at the 2010 Maker Faire:

EDIT

"To be clear, Leigh Christie is one of the founders of the eatART lab and the Mondo Spider. Charlie Brinson is the principal artist behind Titanoboa,  and his team credits can be seen here."

Skylanders Speed Drawing & Coloring Pages

Three years ago, I was given an amazing opportunity to work on Skylanders at Toys for Bob. Working closely with the studio head, Paul Reiche (of Star Control fame), we've crafted all of the Skylanders, and many other creatures and critters of Skylands.

Here is my speed drawing of all 32 Skylanders. Software used is Sketchbook Pro, my drawing tool of choice.

 Me and my son at the local Toys R Us on Launch day..... look at all of the character toys!

And here are some coloring pages for the kids, just right click and select save, then print out the PDF:

Magic Element. Right Click Here, select Save

Tech Element. Right Click Here, select Save

Earth Element. Right Click Here, select Save

Air Element. Earth Element. Right Click Here, select Save

Water Element. Right Click Here, select Save

Fire Element. Right Click Here, select Save

Life Element. Right Click Here, select Save

Undead Element. Right Click Here, select Save

All Elements. Right Click Here, select Save

Skylanders Desktop, good also for IOS devi\ces. Right Click Here, select Save

Mantis Boy

We get lots of Praying Mantis around the yard every year. These guys get pretty big around late summer / fall. This particular one is probably a female about ready to lay her eggs. We enjoy looking for her and holding her, but she is incredibly difficult to spot, even when she's just a few inches away. 

These big ones are easy to handle, it's the small ones that are jumpy and flighty. The big ones rely on camouflage and tend to just stay still on your hand. You just need to give them a small amount of encouragement, and they will climb onto you and stay pretty still. Despite their looks, they are harmless.... to us anyway, and are very fragile, so shouldn't be grabbed by any part of their body. My boy loves them, and I love showing him the ropes and sharing my love of insects. 

Speaking of Mantis. Last year, we found this amazing sight on the same rose plant. This is something that I've only seen on TV and had never witness it in person. When I found them, the male had already lost his head and thorax, including the two grasping front legs. But he still held on with his remaining back legs. He held on for the remainder of the day, and I like to think that this ultimate sacrifice made it possible for some of his offspring to survive, maybe even became the big one that we played with today :)

two mantis, one head

lost half of his body, but still holding on tight