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2018 Little Warriors is a project presented by Diego Fernando Castro Rojas for the Design Project “Touching Things� led by the Professor Christoph Zielke during the Summer Semester 2018. Free use of contents with attribution to the author.
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DANGER! NGE NGE
ALERT LEVEL: QUARENTINE
— INTRODUCTION
‘Little Warriors’ started as a reflection of our daily behavior toward our immediate surroundings. We are so obsessed thinking about cleanliness that we have isolated ourselves from the world as a measure to stay safe from all these terrible diseases we have heard and seen on ad pieces of antibacterial soaps, napkins, products and so on. If the consequences of such behavior would restrict only to the negation of the pleasure of Touching things, the problem would not be that bad. But the reality of this obsession is causing long term changes on the microorganisms that cohabit with us, increasing not only our susceptibility to infections and diseases, but also conditions such as obesity, allergies, asthma among others.1 This project is a subversion against this trend. This project wants to show, that unless you find yourself in an area without safe drinking water in the middle of a rain forest or with serious health problems caused by your immune system, you should not be concerned about what you touch in your normal environment, for simple water and soap should bring back to balance the microorganisms living inside of you. In the following pages, you will find the evolution of this concept applied to a project of character development, concept art, CAD modeling, CAD production and the finalization of it as a commercial product.
1 | Source: Antibiotics: Killing Off Beneficial Bacteria ... for Good? Maryn Mckenna, 08.26.11. Accessed from: https://www.wired. com/2011/08/killing-beneficial-bacteria/
IN THE SEARCH OF AESTHETICS //
AVOIDING REPRODUCTION
— IN THE SEARCH OF AESTHETICS
h=x.3
This a project starts with a research on esthetics. There are similar projects like Giant microbes2 which have released toys addressing this topic, but getting stuck into the actual representation of the microorganism but just in a bigger scale. What this project wants to achieve is to change the way we relate to the microbiome of our own body. For this purpose it was required to create a concept and merge it with the existing formal features of the selected microorganisms. As one of the objectives of the project was to convey the neutral behavior of the bacteria and fungi living in our skin, other types of storytelling were explored, especially the eastern ones. Eastern stories, characters are developed with certain tendencies, but they cannot be depicted as good or evil ones. Every character obeys to its own rules, and the context where they are define mostly their nature3, a character can be good or evil depending on different factors and that is exactly the behavior of microorganisms in our bodies. Their behavior is defined by several factors. r=x
r=x
r=x/6
r=x/4
r=x/2
05. // QUARENTINE FT.
STAPHYLOCOCCUS EPIDERMIDIS Bacteria, Firmicutes
figure 01
Views of the final concept of the characters for this project, front and left views including the relation of size the final product should have
2 | Source: https://www.giantmicrobes. com/us/ 3 | Source: How a melancholy egg yolk conquered Japan Vox, 01.05.17. Accessed from: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=CTAnJTB9roI
Left View
Front View
FT. Actual Relation
MALASSEZIA Fungi, Basidiomycota
Left View
Front View
IN THE SEARCH OF AESTHETICS //
figure 02
(up) First explorations of character creation from the staphylococcus epidermis based on the concept of multiplication
figure 03
(down) Logotype for the product and character exploration of the Malassezia out of how the fungi strain actually looks alike
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figure 04
(up) Final adjustments to the original design based on conceptual feedback. Alternative concept for a possible scenario of application
figure 05
(down) Assembling methods of existing products to join the limbs and the head to the body found in existing art toys.
FROM THE CONCEPT TO THE PRODUCTION //
PLAYING WITH VIRTUAL CLAY — FROM THE CONCEPT TO THE PRODUCTION
Everything on the paper and on messy scribbles looks fine and works fine. Reality is, that shapes in two dimensions behave significantly different than the ones in 3D especially when it comes to speak about joints and gravity. The process of conversion through planes requires redesigning of the characters to optimize for the final format.
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This method of modeling uses the starting primitives that programs includes. For this purpose all the parts of the characters started from a sphere with a hexagonal grid of 9 faces. By modifying the position of the faces it is possible to start modeling the shapes that follow the previous sketches and finally adding details and dividing the current faces the final result is reached.
The process starts by learning a 3d modeling software that will generate a file to be printed with a 3D printer. Since I have never had experience before with 3D modeling, I chose to use Cinema 4D that is a software more related to the field of design than to the engineering one like Fusion 3D or Solid Works are. This software has an interface and a workflow very similar to the software of Adobe, for this reason has had more appealing among the community of designers. One of the challenges for this project was to model the characters thinking about the production since the model of the 3d Printer to be used for this projects, the Ultimaker 2+, still has some limitations. Sharp angles or sections without a solid base turn to be problematic downgrading so the quality of the final product or setting more work after printing. The ideal is to get to the point of not having to polish that much after printing. The advantage of working from a 3d modeling software over a process including prototyping with material like clay and afterwards scanning and printing, is that the software allows to render images with the final materials and appearance the object should look alike in a final stage of production so at the end the result with include a prototype printed to see the behavior of materials, sizes and shapes and a render with a look and feel of the final product.
3D MODELS SENT TO PRINT //
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B
TRY AND ERROR AT THE FAB LAB — 3D MODELS SENT TO PRINT
3d printing is a technique that is still in the way of development, and even when nowadays there are some printers that present less issues when it comes to print, the Ultimaker 2+, printer used for this project, present some requirements in the process of 3d modeling to make more effective the printing of advanced shapes.
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C figure 07
Besides the settings of the printer according to the type of material and printer, there are several factors to take into account when it comes to the step of 3d printing. 1. The type of filament can set some variations on the printing configuration since certain type of colors or filaments from different brands react different and need specific settings for the temperature. 2. The position in which the object is printed can modify certain shapes, when cylindrical spaces don’t have a supporting base, they will be printed as ovals, what can be problematic if the joining part has a specific shape to match with. 3. Forms without a support on the base can be printed by making use of a support structure, this helps the printing process but creates extra material that needs to be removed or polished after printing. Important is that the settings of this structure are not too dense or removing it can cause damages to the desired object. 4. The plate plays another important role. If the plate is not well balanced, it can lead to deformations on the final object, and when an object is split to reduce the structural base on surfaces on the air, it has to be balanced so the two parts can stick together without leaving spaces between them. Additionally, if the plate is not well balanced, the filament may not stick correctly to it and the whole print can be ruined.
(Up) Pieces needed for the assembling of each one of the characters, the color is not the final one since the final one should be in a material related more to vinyl than to plastic.
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Among the most important settings created for this project are: the layer size: between 1,0 and 1,2 to have a better detail of the shapes. A printing speed under 50, so some objects that are too high don’t cause printing disruptions. A wide brim to fix the objects to the plate to avoid the same problem. Since a solid object is not needed, an infill of 25% will make faster the process of all the pieces.
FINAL EXPECTED RESULTS //
ABOUT RENDERED MATERIALS — FINAL EXPECTED RESULTS
Vinyl is a material often used for the production of art toys: the tone generated by the properties of the material as well as the consistence of it make it suitable for an object that invites the user to touch and to play with.
figure 09
Collection of renders displaying how the final product should look alike with the materials, colors and extra accessories. Look and feel of how the image of the product should be at the end.
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One of the challenges of the digital production of the feel and look of the final product was the simulation of the materials they would have in the real production. Vinyl and gold materials have specific visual characteristics that make them distinctive from any other material. For this purpose the motor of render used was VRay for Cinema 4d. The selection of the tones and the color scheme of the objects does not obey to an actual chromatic representation of the bacteria and fungi, although they are often depicted with vibrant colors, they do not have this property since their microscopic scale does not allow the reflection of the rays of light, or at least not the normal scale for the human eye, that’s why a personal interpretation based on actual trends of color for art and designer toys is valid since this parameter cannot be fixed.
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OPEN SOURCE ENVIRONMENTS — CONCLUSION
Open source covers whatever is shared to be used, modified and upgraded by other users. In the field of software development it has many uses and one can find on the Internet many sources containing applications of free distribution. During the process of this project one concept was discussed once the models were ready to print. Toys are often objects to be bought at stores. Outside the stores there is no other place to find toys. These are also designed and produced in a massive way that there is no point of intervention of the user to adapt the toy to his needs. By developing and releasing a 3d model that can be modified and printed at home with a 3D printer this concept can be changed. Now the user can generate his own toys based on existing models downloaded from the internet and modified according to what the user wants. And even if the user doesn’t want to make modifications, a ready file to be set in the printer will break a chain of production that requires a big budget and can be done only by big companies. The open Source toys allows the designer to sell his concept and be released of the process of production from which others get a big part of the revenues. This is an interesting concept that is allowed thanks to the new ways of fabrication existing with the current technologies.
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2018 Little Warriors is a project presented by Diego Fernando Castro Rojas for the Design Project “Touching Things� led by the Professor Christoph Zielke during the Summer Semester 2018. Free use of contents with attribution to the author.
2018 Free use of contents with attribution to the author.