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The Art of Wire and Resin Flowers

Sun, 17 Mar 2019 15:22:04 GMT

What are these beautiful flowers?

I was hanging out on Pinterest the other day when my attention got caught up by some exquisite glittering and crystalline flowers. Looking further I came across many other realizations such as butterflies , fairies, jewelry and many more.

Curious as I am, I decided to dig in further and see how these were made, and I quickly discovered that the process was pretty simple.

Here is what I found.

The art of dip flowers

The technique used is derived from the craft technique for dip flowers, which consists in taking real flowers and dipping them in some kind of resin to petrify them.

But in our specific case, instead of sacrificing some real flowers for the craft, people use some standard craft wire to give shape to their realization and which they dip in resin as you would do with a bubble blower. Then yo ujust have to wait for it to dry, add some paint if you wish, and you have it.

As for the resin, there exists a wide variety of brands (Dip Fantasy Film, Q-dip, Vitriarte, Vitriflor, Glass Flower, Vitral...), but people also have success, as you will see below, using more readily available products such as nail polish or wood glue.

This technique was trending in the 70s and got somehow forgotten up until recently.

Galleries and tutorials

First, here are places where you can see the beautiful realizations of Saion and Sakae (I put them here because I find these realizations beautiful and inspiring, nothing else :) ):

And now on to some tutorials.

First are examples of using nail polish (first inJapanese and second in English):

The main point there is to take care when applying the polish, first at it requires some practice to get the film, and secondly as you have to properly distribute the lacquer over the surface if you want it to look homogeneous (but you can also change the balance to get some transparency ;)). And take care to avoid bubbles...

Here is another basic example using wood glue (the naoil polish is only for getting some colors, but you could as well use some paint):

This third tutorial (in Russian) shows the use of specific resin (Vitral here) which allow easily getting transparency and colors:

And the next tutorial (in Russian again) is more advanced as in addition to the techniques we have seen before it also involves some soldering, but the result is gorgeous therefore worth trying:

And now another example showing some variations on the technique above (using a brush if you don't have an airbrush) as well as added droplets and using crystal:

Thank you, I hope you enjoyed this article :)

Is 3D Printing the Future of Cosplay?

Sun, 10 Mar 2019 16:54:53 GMT

The eve of a new era for cosplay makers

3D printing has been around for a few years now, and with the technology being more mature and getting more and more attention thanks to makers from many horizons, and cosplay nonetheless, new doors a opening for cosplay makers!

And if you want to see one convincing example, just have a look at the example above which displays the work of Melissa Ng around her Sovereign Armor: the result is fantastic and shows great refinement.

Want to know more about it? Let's go then!

3D printing in a nutshell

For the ones who might not yet have heard of 3D printing: 3D printing is a technology allowing the production of objects from a 3D model, and which can potentially be used by everyone.

There are different 3D printing technologies, but basically the production of an object consists in adding or fusing layers of a material (plastic filaments (PLA...) or resins are the most frequent, but you also have iron powder, pastry paste, concrete, cells... and many still to invent) on top of each others using heat, lasers or light. Nothing impressive when you think about it, but one had to have the idea :).

You can have a look at the video below to have an example of the 3D printing process:

3D printers offer different printing volumes going from a few centimeters to 50 centimeters or more, and some allow for the use of different material colors or pigments to add colors to your objects and spare you the need for painting your objects.

3D printers start to be quite affordable (you can get descent models for a 2 or 3 hundred euros/dollars) and can now be found quite anywhere. You can also find some 3D printing services online if you want to test.

As for 3D modelling software, you can start with Blender which is totally free and has a lot of teaching material available in the Blender community or on YouTube.

A shift in perspective and some improvements to be made

Using 3D printing seems great, but the way it works forces a shift in competences: Where you had to spend some time drawing on cardboard/foam/fabric and cutting, you now have to spend hours using A 3D creation software to model the different pieces or your apparel .

Then you have to take into account the fact that 3D printing is still a young technology. 3D printing an object can take hours and you will have to finetune the scale, thickness and rigidity of the printed object to fit your size and use, and this is without counting the moments you will have glitches... And there can be quite a lot of them from my personal experience, from the object not sticking to the plate to vibrations or temperature changes ruining a print, speed tuning...

And afterward you will still have to polish, paint, fit together/glue the different pieces...

Is there any advantages then...

You might wonder what is the advantage of using 3D printing for your cosplays then, if you have to learn 3D modelling and go through the time and pains of getting your model printed?

But if you take a step back, there are quite a few advantages to it, and the technology can open new horizons which could give a new dimension to your cosplays...

First, because all it takes to reproduce an object is the 3D model, some plastic filament and time, you can easily reprint a piece if one gets broken or lost. Moreover, adjusting a piece of gear to your liking is just a question of moving a knob to scale the model up or down (and time :) ). Pretty handy.

And this last option is fro mmy point of view the door to a new world for the cosplay area (as for many other ones) . For instance someone bigger or smaller than you could, after some finetuning, easily print your model to fit her/his size. This means that you could easily build up a business around designing 3D models for full cosplay or cosplay parts, and share or sell those (this is for instance what Lumecluster is doing). And you could yourself benefit from the large community of cosplay makers around the world to reuse pieces for your own designs! And there are aklready quite a few available oin Thingiverse for instance: link .

Conclusions

All in all, I think 3D printing is really a promising technology, be it for cosplay, art, DIY but also cooking, medicine, housing and many other usage yet to invent. And with the communities such as Thingiverse or ideas such as the ones from Lumecluster this is a whole new world that opens for cosplay makers and cosplay-aholics...

Therefore keep an eye on it, and start levelling up your 3D modelling skills ;)

Links

Read Melissa's story on Lumecluster here:
http://lumecluster.com/making-of-sovereign-armor/

Some other 3D printed cosplay inspiration and examples:

Google I/O 2018

183:706349664 (Stéphane Besseau) — Sat, 12 May 2018 20:22:10 GMT

The Eve of Artificial Intelligence

Hi Everyone,

Just had a look at Google's keynote for I/O 18 (see links at the end of this post) and all I can say is: Wow, Innovation at full power.

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is widespreading and Google is integrating it in quite any of its products from G-mail, to Android, passing through Lens, for different purposes.

Time management

First, I liked the idea of making people aware of the time they spend connected , and help them disconnect a bit. When you can't seem to find time do do sports, or reading books, or discussing with your family and friends, and realize you spend 2 or 3 hours everyday on social networks, well I think this may lead people to better manage their time and free some space for what really matters.

Also, I found the possibility of having more automation around Google Assistant really interesting. I can foresee a future where our phones will start to really integrate with the world around, using APIs where APIs exist, and interacting with humans in the other case, and on the other side spare us from some tedious and time consuming tasks.

Some may argue that this is a new step toward dehumanization of social interactions, and I agree with that point in a certain sense. But I also imagine cases where this could help save you a lot of time, as well as sparing your health. Sometimes making calls here and there to get an appointment, or to get a table, or whatsoever, can be really frustrating and time consuming. Therefore if the Google Assistant can do it, this seems better to me.
Of course, if the system was to be perfected, I would say that such system should take into account the affinity you have with your environment to favour human interactions: if you have a favourite hair dressing salon, perhaps that calling yourself for an appointment is a better option, but if all that counts for you is getting an haircut at the best price within two days, then I guess nothing will beat such system.

Image processing

I also found impressive the photo processing functions allowing to recolor an ancient image or help highlighting a character within a photo. Such process was taking hours or days up to now. On the other side, I am less fond of the automatic recognition feature, again for privacy reasons. Is the feature database local to the phone? If not, what other uses will be made of such data...

Augmented reality

I also liked the rework of Google Maps and Google Lens ; this is in my opinion where Google Glass should have led.
We can foresee what will be the future challenges of advertsing: being present in Google Map and having good ratings, and having the features of each of your products in your catalogue identified. The future seems clear for big data ^^.

And more

Last but not least, I find interesting that Google starts to highlight some benefits of AI such has prediction of some events such as readmissions. So many issues and incidents could be avoided by using such approaches which are now mature...

Links:
- https://youtu.be/ogfYd705cRs - full keynote
- https://youtu.be/BRUvbiWLwFI - a 14 minutes "best-of"

Cheers,
Stéphane

Babymetal - Toward a new Generation?

183:706349664 (Stéphane Besseau) — Fri, 11 May 2018 11:22:03 GMT

Hello Everyone,

Something strange seems to be going in the now quite big world of the Babymetal band. Since a few weeks now, the turmoil is rising.

What? You didn't yet here about it?

Well, the rumor is spreading that YUIMETAL is leaving the band!

Everything started back in when YUIMETAL announced that she would not be participating to latest 2017's concert of the band in Japan. And now the band is touring around the world but YUIMETAL was nowhere to be seen on stage during the first gigs in the US. In addition, it also seems that two new members have joined the band. In addition, if you have looked the latest MV from the band, you may have spotted that for the first time since the group exists, the band members are nowhere to be seen in the video clip!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ce456Nnkt8

This could be the prelude of what is called a change of generation in the world of Japanese Idols, and YUIMETAL may be the first to graduate.

The graduation is a common practice in the world of Japanese Idols. It consists in older members of the band being replaced by younger ones. This keeps the Idol group alive when members leave the group while maintaining the freshness brought by youth (some Japanese idol groups such as Morning Musume are almost 20 years old!) . It is also a mean for members to get away from the pressure of the group; Idols have quite a tough life between singing practices, dance practices, academical lessons, gig rehearsals and touring - and this became big for Babymetal which has been touring around the world relentlessly for the last three years and added alot of interviews in the loop. This leaves little to no room in the life of the Idols for a personal life. And this is another goal of graduations (forced ones): keeping away from scandals that may soon occur when members are getting adult and start claiming their autonomy and a personal life, knowing that paparazzi, in Japan more than anywhere else, are on watch.

Babymetal has been existing for more almost 8 years now, time for the new generation?

This is really not a common practice in Occidental culture to see the members of a band changing every two or three years, and if we are effectively assisting to the graduation of the members of babymetal, will the band international notoriety suffer from it?

We will have news soon!

Stéphane

Update 11/05/2018:
Hardly had the time to fininsh writing this post that the news came in: according to the company repsresenting BABYMETAL, the absence of YUIMETAL is part of the global setting of the new album: https://www.altpress.com/news/entry/yuimetal_still_in_babymetal

I am happy of the news as seeing a member from a band you like is always sad, but whatever: the life of a Japanese idol still remains hard.

SBDesigns

183:706349664 (Stéphane Besseau) — Wed, 25 Oct 2017 19:50:52 GMT

Welcome to the world of SBDesigns

Welcome on the SBDesigns' blog.

Being curious of many domains (art, psychology, technology...), I will share with you my in this blog my latest findings and experiences.

See you soon!
Stéphane