Ahh, my very own army. Nothing quite like the feeling of mass production. Makes you feel special and all warm inside. I can make 6 per day and soon more. I’m thinking of making a 2nd mould for the skull. But we’ll see. I think variation and a new form rather than lots of one. Even if it does sell well.
>Pretty much right now I’ve just been sitting around and relaxing. Making candles, playing some games, configuring software, trying to find a new harddrive on ebay. Just Being lazy! Candles do take time though. Much longer than I would have thought. The rubber insulates the heat and slows the process. Plus I have to seal the mould each time otherwise they leak.

>And today I started summer classes which will eat into my time. Yay extra school! I’m taking psychology and English. Blah..

>Van helsing. Great movie if you haven’t seen it, go do that, you don’t have too, but you will be a shallow empty person if you don’t.

> Mean girls: mmmm Lindsey Lohan…

>Second thoughts on the xbox now that it’s Modded and playing movies and old Sega games?

what can I say? If you've got an xbox and you haven't chipped it, it like, well, it's like owning a car and not filling the tank with gas. It’s just silly. You gotta see how beautiful this thing is. It even gives me a 4 day weather forecast!

Random stuff.
>Manaf: “you know who Adam reminds me of? No one! cuz I don't think the universe could take two of him”. (right after I was spastically breaking it down).Geez, seems like sometimes, no one around here can appreciate my random outbursts of song or dance.

>Adam: You know, the other day, I was going to clean. But I hate Cleaning, then I thought, cleaning means dusting. And dusting is annoying. You know what dust and dusting remind me of? Dustin. And Dustin is ugly. If you take the G out of ugly, and put it at the end of Dustin, you get DustinG. Therefore, dusting is also ugly. Say no to dusting!

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.

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 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.

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.

> Had a good day. Exhausted, no sleep in 2 days. Insomnia from stress or something. Dunno, don’t care. Feel tired, so all is good. Tired = possible sleep.
Spent my usual too much time in school. 11 hours today. So I’m tired right now. But talked to a lot of people, so feel satisfied. School = social. Home = TV.

> Was happy with the sculpture I’m working on, got my Circuit further built, and got an ego boost.

Steve ( really nice friggen cool guy that does amazing electronical art (he’s currently doing a microscope with Hi8 film running through it and a computer controlled Barbie cat-scan that kicks ass and has an incredible computer interface of a dissected woman, you can’t believe how cool this thing is, very professional)).

Anyways, some second year kid came running in the other day wanting to do a project like this other one he saw last year. This wicked electronic bat that moved it’s head all over and stuff and was controlled by a computer. He thought it was the coolest thing ever and wanted to know how to do the same.

So Steve was like, you’ve got a fan man. Which of course was funny. I’ll have to track him down and show him how I did it. (Wish the pictures did it justice, but you gotta see it moving in person. Not blurry, badly lit still photos.)

> Also, everyone’s been ragging me for my shaggy hair. Calling me ‘shaggy’.
Ahhh no.
We really are creative most of the time. The thing is though; it’s the look that suits my lifestyle. The less I shower, the better my hair looks. Laundry = the same. I can wear $10 jeans and a $5 shirt, not shower and show up 5 minutes after crawling out of bed, and I’m ‘stylish’.
Whatever man. Works for me.

Did a paper cast of my skeleton.
> Started researching skin casting for my next project. My ‘shoe series’. 555 timers, flexinol wire, latex and creepiness.
Yes I figured out what my Electronics project will be… stay tuned.
> I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. I may actually finish my table.
For a while I didn’t think I ever would. 2 weeks. What a joke.

> Went to Alexis’s’ for wine and pasta, Run Lola Run, oh and Godzilla Vs the Sea monster. (!)
> Saw the Egyptian sculpture display at the ROM, also enjoyed the Giant T-rex.

>> Redesigned this site.

Now when it comes to just about anything important, I always miss some crucially important step. Today I forgot release agent.

Thus the rubber stuck to the wax and meant 3 hours of pulling / tugging, and ripping to get it out of the mould. Yay.

It was actually a lot of pain and effort to get the mould open. We had to stand on the table and pull to finnaly get it. All in all that step alone 1.5 hours. Yuck. (moulds have 2 layers. The plaster (rigid) and the rubber (soft) ).

But now I have a wax replica. So it was worth it.

>> Watched Cabin fever. Scray crazy, messed up movie. Can’t sleep.

>> It’s only 5 weeks of class left!!!! Where’d it all go?!

I don’t want to stop and won’t. I’ll get summer class. Can’t stop now.

Must learn. Sculpt.
Will not go to 4 months of bordom. Will sculpt, art out, and sell sculpture.

It’ll be either the biggest mistake ever, or the beginning of my self employed career in the art/craft world.
Only 40 days to go.