Overview
As much as character design or sculpting, material choice can be a huge influence on the final piece.
Vinyl, resin, and cast plastics are popular in the art toy world. But these are not typical materials we work with at ITP. We’re going to look at some ITP friendly and non-traditional material choices for art toys.
Display Our Work
Take a few minutes to display this weeks assignment.
Artists to watch
Lou Lou’s Woodshop
Sad Salesman (Eric Althin)
Blamo
Materials
Material can add meaning to your piece. Is it high end? Delicate? Exotic? Polished? Crude? Juxtaposed (wooden robot)?
Typically, art toys are made mostly from vinyl or resin. But we have a different list of ITP friendly materials.
Choosing the right material is only half of it. What material technique or process do you plan to use to work with the material?
Keep in mind, your final pieces can be made up of one or many different types of material, as well as being made with one or many different material techniques.
Wood
Wood shouldn’t be too foreign for us. Wood comes in a variety of sizes, shapes, and species. Picking out a species of wood can add a lot to a piece.
Traditional wood working techniques are cutting, carving, sanding, drilling, routing, filing, dremeling.
David Week’s Studio makes quite a few wooden designer toys.
what-did-i-eat-ephunt – Amanda Visell
At ITP we have a few specialty wood working tools. These machines require more experience or training to use.
Wood Turning (using the lathe)
CNC Milling: 4 Axis mill, 3 axis mill
Laser Cutting and Engraving
Be warned, it is difficult to “elevate” a wooden laser cut project. Design, technique, and finish can aid in this.
Plastic
We use a lot of acrylic, delrin, sheet vinyl, PLA, and styrene around here.
Milled Acrylic Inlay (not laser cut acrylic)
3D Prints
Be warned, it is difficult to “elevate” a plastic 3D print. Design, technique, and finish can aid in this.
Vacuum Forming
Cut Vinyl
Heavy Eyes Diver and Shark
CNC Milling: 4 Axis mill, 3 axis mill
Metal
Most likely aluminum or brass if you are working with it in our shop. You can mill it, turn it, roll it, punch it, and nibble it. It can even be 3D printed (Shapeways or Metal infused filament).
Fabric
You can make plush pieces.
Felt
Acrylic felt can be laser cut.
Leather
Leather can be cut, embossed, laser etched, wet formed, milled, and or dyed. It adds a high end element to a toy.
Circuit board material FR4 Printed Circuit Board Material
Def Con Badges
K7 – Pedro Galvão Cesar de Oliveira
Exotics
I don’t expect most of you to try these materials, but I haven’t seen a lot of art toys made from these materials. Possible to be one of a few working with these materials.
Cast Concrete
Ceramic
Paper/Cardboard
Haruki Nakamura karakuri puppets
Cork
Cork can be milled in shorter times than denser materials like wood, plastic, and metal.
Mushrooms
In the Fungus Among Us class, we found that mushrooms can be molded into forms with pretty good results.
In Class Demo
Acrylic Inlay
Pedro’s Talk
Assignment
Pick your material(s), pick your process, and get going. I want to see a sculpt that is close to the finished product. Think of it as the first run piece from your 4 piece line. Don’t worry about finish yet (unless you want to).
You should pick material that is fitting for your piece. Pick a technique you enjoy or want to learn.
Related Reading/Viewing
Filablend – uniquely colored 3D printer filament
Building Beautiful Boards with Star Simpson
Successful Experiments in Multicolor Circuit Boards
Darth Vader Vinyl Cape Replacement