The 2016 Sign Challenge to be held at the International Sign Association Expo is coming fast! Peter’s and my entry pieces have been ready since the new year but before we sent them off we had one more piece to build. It’s the trophy that all of the entrants are hoping for. The design of the prize is meant to reflect the competition itself. The dimensional letters are stacked up inside a crate.
Normally the welded steel armatures we build for our sculptures don’t get any treatment. Most of the the frames never see the light of day and are hidden inside our sculptures behind a thick layer of sculpted concrete. The pieces going to Dubai are going into a water park environment and the client asked the they be galvanized to ensure they don’t rust. Today the galvanizer phoned to tell us they have some out of the zinc vat and were ready for pickup.
With all of the other things going on in our shop these days we manage to design and route three or four name plaques each day. There are still six weeks until the workshops so we will have time to do them at a somewhat leisurely pace. Six more are now ready for paint.
Simon’s name plaque was all about using texture bitmaps to manipulate the relief in cool ways. I wanted the finished name plaque to resemble two plates riveted together with the lettering raised over the top. The first step was to create the necessary vectors. I then created two separate fat reliefs. When I hit the render button they appeared as one relief but this is because they were the same height.
Dustin’s name plaque was the next to be done. I used a method and tools that I don’t often use in EnRoute. The vectors were designed (as usual) in EnRoute. To create a chamfered edge I used the bevel tool and the ‘limit to height’ command. By defining the base (0.35″) and the height of the finished relief (0.75″) as well of the angle of the bevel (45 degrees)I had full control of the results
Work has begun in earnest on the first of the features for the Viking project. The crew has created quite the arsenal of Viking style weapons! Using EnRoute to create the files and the MultiCam Plasma cutter saved countless hours in creating these pieces. The same is true for the ships yet to come! We used the plasma cutter to cut the bases for the features from half inch thick plate steel. The structural frames were then welded off of this base.
It’s that time once more. With the Sculpting Magic Workshops now just over seven weeks away it is time to begin preparations. That means it’s time to do the name plaques which we present to all attendees. That’s more than thirty different pieces to create
With the plans, models and engineered drawings now behind us it is time at last to begin actual construction. The first bit to get the green light was the dock barrels, boxes and weapons. We decided for maximum reality we would build the axe heads and sword blades in steel.
The Viking ship project has now grown to include a thirty foot and six foot wide targets (for water guns and the like) as well as some crates, barrels and weapon features for the dock. We first had to go through an extensive design process which involved models, concept drawings and many pages of engineered plans.