Great course. With every project or exercise I sculpt my abilities increase noticeably. How could I not love that?

The final project was a 4-week full body study. I did all right. I started out with a burst and went far ahead of everyone else, but then lost my momentum. It’s still one of my better sculptures, but Instead of focussing on the whole thing, I kept focussing in on specific areas such as the head, when I wasn’t ready too.

I knew this, but for some reason didn’t care and just wanted to have fun. Lesson learned, I won’t do that again, I wasn’t happy in the end with the sculpture.
Over all I learned tons from this course, got a boost in my drive to do more sculpture, loved my teacher and had fun. Got the top mark in the class.

The Table is DONE! What I thought would take 2 weeks, took 4 months! Things always take longer than you think.

>Finding wood for the non-metal sections proved to be rather difficult without a car, and because I needed to have the metal sections done to double check the measurements, a big thanks goes out to my Mom, for her last minute wood purchases. Thanks mom!

>The main section of the table can be assembled with just a few simple bolts to make for easy transportation of it, or it can simply be pushed around using the 3 wheels on the back of it.
>The centre box with drawers holds recycling and has it’s own set of wheels to allow for laziness when we bring the recycling downstairs. The first time I did this, one of the people that works in the building was like ‘Wow, hmmm, that’s a really good idea..’ then he starred at it for another 2 minutes. I think he wanted one.. :)

>The whole thing cost just over $200cdn which isn’t bad considering it’s a custom design. The majorority of the cost came from the stainless steel top.

Thanks also goes out to the wonderful metal shop mallet. Remember, whenever something doesn’t fit, just hit it with a hammer.

Mould-making went well. I had 3 main projects, my cloaked series, the muscle study, and finally my skull. You can see the original clay sculpture (fits in the palm of my hand) next to a brown wax test pour from the mould.

The most important thing I learned from this class was patience (Finally it happened!) there’s no point spending a few weeks on a sculpture and then destroying it because you rushed the mould by 1 hour. Lesson learned.

>>Ken story- no mould-making class is complete without ken telling a story. This time after he looked at my mould he commented it looked like a monkey head. (yeah.. imagine the skull with a few layers of rubber on it) I said, yeah that reminds me of the part in Indiana Jones when the eat the monkey. Ken laughs and then begins talking about a student’s rich father that used to partake in all the illegal, underground cuisine in Singapore. One such dish involved a table with a circle cut in the centre. A live monkey with the top of his skull removed was then placed so his head was sticking out of the hole. You then eat the monkeys brain while he’s alive. (ken didn’t look happy telling this story).
-Yes, I’m all for cultural differences, but,.. and yet,.. there are some places I will never travel too.

Ken is a very travelled person in both life and mould making / sculpture and it was great to get so much technical information out of him. Ken will always answer your question and if he can’t, he’ll go home and research it and have the answer for next week. I wish more instructors at OCAD were like him.

The shoe is definitely my favourite project of this year. I learned a lot form it and it actually turned out EXACTLY the way I wanted it too.

>The only difference is that I originally planned for it to have 4, not three motors, but their physically wasn’t room for the 4th. Also, I have to modify it to use an AC adaptor, as it drains the internal 9v battery in 35 minutes! Didn’t see that one coming…

Everyone loved it, even people in the halls.
Every time someone got closer they’d just say “wow it looks even better – Oh my god is that hair? It has Hair?!”

Or people would just think it was a real shoe. Which is an even better complement (an old shoe.. obviously, but a real one).

>> Learned a lot from the various stages of production.

// Mechanical, electrical, moulding, latex casting, pattern design, hair application.

What it does.
The shoe is stitched together with multiple pieces of Latex rubber cast out of moulds made from my own skin. It occasionally vibrates/pulsates, and twitches on the floor as if it were still alive.

How it works
The shoe uses a circuit to interpret signals sent out from an MP3 Player (Rio PMP 300), and converts them into on/off commands which it sends to the motors. The circuit works the same way the VU analyser on a stereo works (the lights that bounce up and down when a song plays). It uses a hv3915 chip but instead of outputting to lights, the signal is converted from a negative pulse, to a positive one, boosted and then sent to the motors. This gives the appearance of random movement with no need for programming as highs and lows in the song will determine when and how the shoe moves.