So who’d of guessed? Plastic part #2 went smooth without a hitch! No shattered moulds this time (learning I am) and the plastics lab has a new gauge so I can actually measure the tank pressure, which made a huge difference.

Process. Clay sculpture-> silicon mould -> hydrocal plaster casting (positive) then loads of sanding (loads. The clear plastic pics up even DUST! So it better be a flawless sculpture, which is was, people were touching it and smiling) then vacuum forming x19.
P.S. Sweat. Hot room. Drenched head in water, but the plastic fumes still killed me. ( 6 hours to make 19).

March 26
-Because when a can of compressed air leaks, covering the insanely cold liquid spraying out with your hands might be the first reaction, however, it’s also the wrong one.
My hand hurts. I think the skin is dead.

-Cast and airbrushed prosthetic for Angela’s thesis.

March 25
Programming
-Got the heart monitor programmed. Some problems with the reset to the sequencer, but that’s all cleared up now. Evened out the power, and used a different pin from the microchip.

-Sculpted and moulded the slit neck prosthetic for Angela’s thesis. It also hides a tube, so that blood will pump out of the neck.

March 22 -24
-Finished sculpting / moulding /casting the second mould for the second piece of plastic.
-2 days of sanding it down ahead to get it smooth, then I’ll vacuum form clear plastic over it. Fell behind schedual…
-Registered genpets.com

March 20
Finished text and layout for thesis paper. It’s a product catalogue for the genpets. I’ll have it up on this site for download as a PDF later; it still needs photos and misc graphics.

For the genpets project I printed 36 circuits, fully etched copper, all from my apartment.

March 15 -Circuit drilling
Drilled holes for all 36 circuits. Which was insane. The main overkill circuit had 96 holes (x19) =1824 /// The heart rate circuit had 32 (x19) =608

For a grand total of 2432 holes drilled. Glad I have a drill press.
(also modified my drill press so it has a light on it now)

March 10
Too busy to write in journal. Work work work work thesis. What I’ve done in the last 10 days
-Made 4 part silicon/plaster genpet creature mould
-Bought/received supplies: Servos, 300 ultra bright Led’s, Circuit Etching tank, Digital scale
-Printed circuits/ ironed/etched/ cut/drilled holes.
-Completed rough draft of thesis paper.

March 9 -Circuit etching
I needed a plank of wood or something similar to do my ironing for circuit boards. The iron on pattern
Melted my Macintosh ironing board. Apparently it just couldn’t take the heat.

Oh well. I have 2 more.

The genpet creature mould took forever, and was a lengthy process, as I haven’t made a mould (a serious one) for a while. But this one is definitely my best.

It’s 4 parts. 2 plaster, 2 silicon rubber housed within (the plaster is a shell that keeps the flexible rubber in place).

When I poured the first part of silicon (3rd step) I eyeballed the set-up, and figured I’d probably be wrong. Well, I wasn’t. I got the mix right within 3grams! I used 447 grams exactly. And it was a perfect pour. Forgive me for being proud, and shocked, but without a scale, I doubt there are many pros out there that could do as well.
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Me and V also had an interesting conversation the other day revolving around my limits. She wonders if I’ll ever be able to not be a perfectionist, and worries it will ultimately get in my way of actually completing things on time when needed. I’ll may not be able to just say, it’s good enough.

This worries me as she’s right, and I dunno if I’ll get over it or not.

whenever I doubt what I do, there’s always a voice deep down that says the same thing, and it always says it with an unwavering compassion and determination, Whenever I look in the mirror, it’s there even in my eyes.

I’d rather give my best and fail, than give into mediocrity. It’s that simple.

This is how I live my life as of late, and it’s the driving force not just behind each individual piece of art I do, but why I am an artist. Being “just good enough” would never make me happy. I could finish this project and have time to drink every night and party and watch movies and hang out. But I’d rather not be social at all, and be insane by spending every waking moment I have and skipping sleep when needed, to make this thing as great as possible.

I must always push to be one step better than I was the moment before.

This is what I do, I do not expect my friends to understand, and while they will all be making $50k+ salaries while I am just getting by, living off macaroni, I’m sure I will be the butt of many jokes. But it's what I love.

Done. I have 20 white pieces of styrene.

Laura and manaf came for the final one so I could show them the process. It’s pretty cool to see the plastic get sucked down into the shape.

The vacuum form machine had far too much compression and completely obliterated my hydrocal mould! I had 2 casts, and after 3 hours of sanding, hearing it shatter as the plastic came down on it with insane force, wasn’t the happiest moment in my day.

There were a few options at this point, most very expensive alternatives to plaster, but to make a long story short it was a few hours and rob was there with me helping and keeping my spirits up and I couldn’t have made it through this process without him, so thanks!! (now die).

Eventually after long frustrating-ness (?) I said “Fuck it”. (I said a lot more than that actually) and like always I just did it my way (rob and phil had already suggested a clay or wax backing, so I put that in) and I simply put all the shattered bits back together, and vacuum formed.
Is it perfect? Hell no, you can see where it cracked. With each cast it got progressively worse and chipped a little more. (it shattered on the very first cast remember) but I just treated it as nicely as I could and with a little patience, and some clay in-between cracks, got 20 done. By the end of the night I was getting pretty fast and doing 1 every 15-20minutes.

The heater is massive tho and by 9pm I was sweating, and stumbling everywhere, I just couldn’t take the heat anymore, even with drink breaks between every cast. I was glad to go home.

It was interesting to see how wasteful the process is. I’d forgotten. To make a piece approx 9.5x12 I needed a 20x20 piece of styrene. More than half of the plastic I paid for and used, will simply go into the trash, not cool at all. Styrene can be recycled and printed back into new sheets, I can only hope they send the scraps back to the company…

So what have I been up to?
Photoshop is for simple folk; I use my computer to make circuits!

This is Overkill. It’s the main circuit board that will go into every single Genpet package. Why is it titled overkill? Cuz it is. Out of lazyness, I chose to design one frelling beast of a circuit, rather than 5 different tailored versions.

It has pads for 3x TIP120’s, 4 servos, 4 LED’s, 1x PIC (microchip + support circuitry), and one AUX connector for my 2nd circuit that goes into the packaging. The second circuit simply has flashing leds for the heart monitor.

I’ve also been making slight progress on the packaging for the creatures, but it’s still not right.. not gonna go into production till I’m satisfied..

Apparently getting the new type of chip programmed and running wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Me and Rob spent the better part of an afternoon on it. Finally though it’s all good. We had to add some VERY specific code to the beginning of our programming and I finally got it. Microchip also shipped my samples form the Thailand warehouse and they arrived here in 1 day.

Also bought my Airbrush compressor today for painting the Thesis creatures. $96. small and portable.

Well everything's just upside down now!

I was all set to save money on PIC's by using 555 timers for the majority of my thesis circuits. (previous entry)

Background: Pic's are programmable microchips, they cost $8 and have cpu's, ram, rom I/o pins. You’ve seen other PDIP style packages (black rectangle shapes) around..(first picture). PIC’s generally use Oscillators to acquire their timing and clock cycles (second picture).

So what’s new?

The custom 555 circuit I mentioned last entry was gonna total $4 after capacitors etc which was half cost of my 16f84a chips, but yesterday I was reading about PIC’s for most of the day, and found the 16F628 !!! Rob mentioned it but hadn’t really gone into learning it yet. So I did.

Wowies!
It’s about $5 ($3 less than the 16F84a) and it has DOUBLE the code space 2k instead of 1k, as well as other features, but the kicker is it has a built in OSCILLATOR! That’s the clock that tells the chip how fast to run and what to do, it’s like the chips pulse. The clocks aren’t a big deal, but it eats up 2 pins as well as costing an extra $1 (multiply by 18 for thesis)

So do I build a multi-piece circuit with difficult to design timings with 555's and hardware programming just to save $1?

BUT WAIT! There’s more! If you order now, we'll throw the PIC in for FREE! Operators are standing by!

Yes, Microchip.com is sending me FREE samples! About $50 worth! So the cost of using a PIC is… 5cents for the socket!
So do I wrestle with capacitors and resistors to get the right delay? Or do I simply program "pause 8000" for my 8 second delay I want… hmmm tough choice.

What else did I do? Well I played with my motor shipment yesterday of course! It’s what I need that circuit to control.
And my Gear motors are AMAZING! Everything I could have EVER hoped for!!
Not only are they geared, but they have a built in circuit. When you send them a short + signal, they spin 1 full rotation exactly and then stop! And they do it in about 1-2 seconds (slow and nice) (in comparison to a normal motor that simply spins insanely fast non stop).

These will be the basis for the chest breathing mechanism of the animatronics in each.

I cut some more corners on thesis last night, couldn't sleep, just thinking and worked on it (only happens when I have to wake up for 7:30) ..., it caught my attention,... why are 18 things ALL moving. That would look like a circus. Very busy. Too busy. And I’m never about busy. I’m about subtle. People know that. Thus, you see the problem.

So I will make only 5 genpets move, and 12 will be 'sleeping' with only there chests rising up and down. They’re still animatronic I guess, but far easier than my original vision. But it makes more sense. So Hei, cool. I’m all for better yet simpler.

Beyond making things easier, it also cuts down costs. While there’s still at least 1 gear motor in each sleeper, I don’t need a microchip to do such a simple action. I can make a custom circuit based on a 555 timer IC. The cost of chip goes from $7 -> $1 for 12 of the packages. Not to mention servos etc I would have used on those packages. This will allow me to focus more on the quality of a few.

What else? Less programming! That’s 12 chips I don’t need to program! I was already beginning to sweat about that one, as they all needed different programs (200 lines of code x 12 + hours and hours getting the timing right for that code).

What else? All-Electronics ran out of the gear motors I need. I only have 10 right now. Not all 30. 4 years they’ve had them, and they happen to be out now. And where else do you find a discontinued obscure Gearmotor out of Mac floppy drives? People seem to want an arm and a leg for old floppies and I’m not paying $17 for a friggin motor. (all-electronics replied to my email to say they’re not getting any more in).

Also, I’m rather happy with discoveries into frost FX and other SFX materials (thanks to Nigel for pointing me to Van Dykes Taxidermy). I’ll be making 2 faulty units and these materials will make them look amazing. One will look to have frosted up, another goo-a-fied (tis a real word, frell you). Frost FX is expensive, but so are servos and microchips. So the package costs the same in the end.

Acetate.
I need to make quick stencils for lights embedded in the packages, I was using electrical tape or double sided printing, but then it hit me. Overheads! They’re not perfect, but they do well enough, and they’re a HELL of a lot faster! And I can make glowing text etc,.. opens up things a bit. $20 for laser printer ones was sucky, but, my inkjet ones suck.

A prototype design of the Genpet is on my desk…. Starring up at me.
Whether I like it or not, I don’t know. It’s cute, but too baby like.
I’ve hit a lot of problems with these. Hollywood really screwed me over. Anything not mammalian generally looks alien. Reptile features? Alien. Tentacles or flippers? Alien. It sorta limits me into making something that doesn’t look all that genetically altered. And whatever I sculpt has to fit in a package. I’m feelin the burn. (note : burn refers to sculptures block, no exercize beyond going to the couch to play Halo2 has been accomplished).

LED Madness! Blue Led’s are usually $3 each. I found a place, that when bought at 100, they’re 30cents each!!!! Little difference there.
So my fresh checkers will use 2-4 blue Leds each (total at about 60). I’m also considering placing a heart rate monitor in each pack. It’s extra cost and work, but I really like how the one in the prototype package looks.

Glass eyes? $5 a pair…. With my edited design, only 5 will require glass eyes.. so it’s not a matter of cost,. I’m just deciding, is it right to buy eyes? Or do I need to make them? (I can use sculpy + gloss)
I’m anal about issues like that. Every other artist out there cuts corners, and pays people to make things for them, so where does that line lie? It’s a small thing,… but still… there are certain things that differentiate me from every other asshole out there that simply staples moss to the wall…

So I’ve been working everyday, from when I wake up, till I go to bed (and I bring my sketchbook to bed with me) and it’s beginning to pay off I think. I still lack final plastics designs and the genpets, but I’m getting close…

The_Genpets thing has me working endlessly, but without actually getting anywhere. It’s amazing how you can work for 8 hours and be exactly where you were when you started. The graphic design is done, but I just can’t get a good sculpture of the animals. Right now it’s holding up everything else. Tho Rob has convinced me to use Dragan servos. I cracked. Servos and foam latex.. I’m going pro.. the world is falling apart. (Things have gotta be bad when I drink coke)