Chandelier Saga Part 1: Conception

Chandelier Saga Part 1: Conception

A bit over two months ago, I was contacted by someone with whom I used to work, who now works with The Possible Project, a non-profit youth entrepreneurship outreach program thing. They were having a huge fundraiser gala at the beginning of October, and wanted to commission a big hanging chandelier as a focal point for the banquet. They're getting ready to build themselves a maker space, complete with a laser cutter and other tools, so they wanted the piece to show off rapid fabrication in some way, probably by having the piece made largely of laser-cut wood.

I was given pretty free range, with the understanding that I would come in every week or two and show the kids in the program what I was doing, giving them a view at how one might go about making a big project, and getting input from them about the design. The goal was to be able to have them also help with assembly, if possible.

Since I don't especially want to take up too much vertical space on people's feeds, jump the break for the early stages of my design process:

The first thing I did was to stay up for a while one night when I was already kind of punchy and just spew ideas down onto a page. Most of them were laser-cut wood ideas, though a few of them I was less sure about how to actually make them.

Having done that, I crawled the internet for precedents, and gave my first talk to the kids about what sort of things are possible with the medium. When doing something new, I always think it's a good idea to look around and see what sorts of solutions other people have come up with. It's a way of getting some inspiration going, finding ideas that you can riff on, and also get a sense for what sorts of ideas people haven't much tackled yet. (In fact, a large part of why I started working with leather was that, while working at a laser-cutting shop, I was looking around for materials that lasered well but not many people were using. And I ended up with leather.) Here are some of my favorites. Actually, one sentence is not quite enough.

And then I started sketching, both digitally and physically:

There was a major consideration that steered my thinking at this point: size. They wanted the final piece to be just about as big as could be made while still fitting inside someone's car to travel to its final destination. The thing is, the laser cutters I have access to are only so big--18 by 32 inches, to be precise. So anything large has to be constructed of smaller pieces. At the same time, I was told that the heaviest the riggers would hang something for the event was 75 lbs. That meant the ideas that involved big planes of material were right out.

So I decided to try to make it as a surface built up from small units connected together, making a skin that was light and self-supporting, without needing all the pieces to be hung off of a structural skeleton. This also meant that I shouldn't need to construct large structural ribs up out of smaller parts, which I was glad about. I was thinking about going for something built like one of the concepts I prototyped in paper, but with a more expansive and amorphous shape, and possibly with a second layer of skin inside the outer one.

But, everyone loved liked the idea with the overlapping scales and light emanating out from inside. Including me. I was a bit hesitant because I was pretty sure it would take more careful geometry shenanigans and tweaking than the other ideas, and I had only so much time to work on it. But I went for it.

What followed were quite a few rounds of strenuous modeling in Rhino broken up with cutting and assembling prototypes. But I think that's enough for this post. Stay tuned for Part 2!

Craft Fair!

I'll be vending at a craft fair in Cambridge MA tomorrow! It's called Cambridge Open Market, it's located at the plaza at Harvard, and runs from 11-5:30. This is my first real live full-scale regular craft fair! (Though I have done a real live full-scale non-regular craft fair.) It runs weekly on Fridays through the summer, with tomorrow being the opening day. I'm signed up for three days over the course of the summer: tomorrow, then once in July and once in August.

Here's hoping it goes well!

This dragon tail has a fading amber color pattern. It's composed of actual bronze down the center, blending into brown and orange anodized aluminum. The underbelly is standard uncolored aluminum. Also featured in the design is a full like of spikes down the spine.

The bronze when it's new is a shiny-penny copper color, and over time it oxidizes to a more matte and muted brown. I like the material a good amount, and I'm glad the commissioner for this was also excited about it. I don't get much chance to use the material.

I'm including the pattern I drew up for this coloration, in case people are curious. I'll also see about getting someone to model it before I ship it out, because I really liked the blend of colors on this tail and I'd like to get more photos.

Here are progress shots of a leather helm I just finished up. Another post with photos of it finished will follow.

I did the designing in Rhino, which is a 3D modeling program I've been using ever since architecture school. It was unexpectedly frustrating to find a 3D scan of a head, but I finally found one on Thingiverse with a creative commons license, which I am grateful for. I really wanted to get the geometry for a head right, that was the whole point.

To be honest, this particular design I was thinking of mostly as a test or proof of concept. I'm planning on making more in a similar manner, and I figure I'll work on more compelling shaping and detailing for those, but I wanted to just make a smooth one first to make sure it worked. I didn't want it to be completely plain, though, so once I'd gotten it cut I punched holes for purposes of putting spikes through.

Then I had the question of what color to do. I figured I could just do a plain black, and with all the spikes it would be extravagant but not out of genre for punk/goth/industrial or something. But I wasn't super excited about that, and I realized that there were 6 sections, and after some agreeing suggestions from a friend, I decided to go for a huge rainbow. Which means it's completely ridiculous, and a good contender for the most outlandish piece I've made to date.

For future versions, I think I'll try with thicker leather. I also figure I'll do some toying with making the pieces fold/bend like spiky scales or something, which would give me something more in keeping with many other of my designs. And maybe also some different patterns of breaking up the surface into panels. And definitely riveting the pieces together, that would be much faster.

Anyway, next up will be photos of the final piece. But not now, tomorrow. It's time for bed.

Here's a quick photo of this dragon tail commission I just knocked out. It's done in anodized aluminum, primarily black with a purple underbelly.

I just finished the scale shirt I was slogging away on for a long time, and was feeling like I hadn't finished very many things for too long of a time, and was antsy. So I pounded this out in a day and a half.

Tomorrow I'll take some nice photos of it being worn outside in some natural light, but today it was rainy.

If you're curious about these, check out my tail commissioning guide!

This is definitely the shortest dragon tail I've made. The commissioner requested that it be only 16 inches long, so it wouldn't quite reach down to knee height. They asked for a mix of purple and blue, and I put together a pattern for them, which they liked.

Photographing the purple scales is always troublesome. The fact that it's approaching twilight and the light is very blue doesn't help.

As usual, it's made of anodized aluminum scales linked together with stainless steel rings. I included the pattern, in case people were curious. (Though I ended up slightly expanding the top after finishing it according to the pattern and finding that I had mis-calculated the length a bit.)