Post #310207 by Tikitronic on Thu, May 31, 2007 9:54 PM

I have an experiment to share (trying out a new medium).

So - it was late January I needed to design a mug for this year's Tiki-Kon.
Seeing as
a) I was somewhat dissatisfied with my results from my first mug attempt (sculpting in mold-able resin - 2005):

and
b) was even more dissatisfied with my second attempt (carving a mug out of hard foam 2006):

and
c) I've been wanting to start learning 3d modeling for some time now, I decided to get on it and see if I could use the mug as a 3d starter project, and hopefully learn enough to sculpt this years mug. Which - in retrospect - was pushing my luck with regards to time-line.

But anyhoo - I won't show my first attempt.
My second attempt (late march) at least bore a resemblance to the design I had in my head.
But was still pretty rough, more cartoony than I wanted, and was abandoned at this point:

At that point, I stopped, took a deep breath, re-watched some tutorials, and started over.
The result* was this guy, who I'm calling Luaahi:

• with some assistance on getting the lettering on there properly - thank you Gideon!

The other organizers were satisfied with the design (and in fairness - probably a bit impatient to get the thing out of my head and into production:) - so I sent the file for digital output, and 2 weeks later received this in the mail:

**
** photograph courtesy of Tikimama

I have to say - its a little surreal to sculpt something on a computer, and then being able to hold it in your hands.
Next step - Melintur is working on the mold making process, and then we start experimenting with glazes.

I'd love to hear thoughts/advice on the medium/constructive criticism on the design/etc.
Has anyone else out there tried designing a mug (or any other tiki stuff) this way?