Marvelous Margaret: How I Became a Potato Head

It is never easy to leave when you've really built a family of close friends at your work. And when they decided to make you into a potato head it is even harder to say goodbye!

Marvelous Margaret Potato Head
She demolishes poor workflow!

Why a potato head? You may be wondering...

Well, it started out with this little toy collection I started on my desk...

Miss Marvelous joins the Super Hero/Star Wars/Marvel Pop Taters, PacMan, Back to the Future, and Ghostbusters

And my colleagues thought, the only appropriate send off would be to make a super hero potato head of yours truly. Complete with frequently seen accessories like my fingerless gloves and my purple hair streak.

They started with a concept sketch, and then the team set to work.

Vinny drew an illustrator version of Miss Marvelous. She's carrying the DS "Compass" as a shield. After all, she's a super hero, she needs some kind of weaponry. Ben 3D modeled the shield and had it 3D printed.

The team purchased some potato parts and combined parts of Mr. and Mrs. Potato Heads to get the right elements in place. Mrs. Potato Head had blond hair and eyelashes, so Vinny painted them black. Additionally he painted the purple streak in too.

Alex custom made the box, including the feet cutout so Miss Marvelous didn't rock around inside.

And of course, have to pitch the fact that it is extremely tasty with cheese (it is a potato after all) and of course it has to be in French as well (the parent company - DS - is French)

Chinloo created the fingerless gloves by creating a fingerless glove! She took a normal sized magic glove, cut off the finger tips which is about the size of Miss Marvelous's hand, and then cut the tip off and a small side hole to fit the potato hand. She then used sparkly glue to keep it from fraying at the edges.

But wait, there's more!

Miss Marvelous is carrying a Batdz Maru backpack, complete with purple backpack straps made from purple electrical tape!

So of course, the only reasonable thing for me to do is dress as my potato head the next day. Complete with the purple shoes and red hoodie.

Badtz Maru is not amused... but then, he never is. =D

And there you have it - how I became a potato head. :)

Hand Modeling on Android This Time

Apparently I've graduated from iOS device hand modeling to Android device hand modeling!

The eDrawings for Android application was just launched in the Google Play app store today and yours truly was once again the hand model for showcasing the application on a Nexus 7 Android tablet. The app will work on various Android device sizes running Android 4.0+.

Maybe there's an alternative career here after all.... ;)

More Hand Modeling (and a New eDrawings iPad / iPhone App)

We launched!

eDrawings iPad & iPhone apps (both Pro and Standard) has launched with a new feature - Augmented Reality!

Yours truly is not only a hand model for the app description page this time around, I actually had something to do with designing the Augmented Reality (AR) feature, including the user interface for scaling, locking the viewport, and gestures for manipulating the model like lifting the model off the table.

What is Augmented Reality, you might ask. Here's the wikipedia definition: Augmented reality(AR) is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.

It's a new world of 3D model manipulation on smart mobile devices in virtual space.

That's right - SolidWorks has launched this new feature on the existing eDrawings iPhone and iPad apps, so if you have already bought the apps, get the update and the feature will automatically appear. If you haven't bought it... well... what are you waiting for? =P

3D Puzzle - Pearl of the Orient

I had a chance to put together the 3D puzzle of Shanghai's Oriental Pearl Tower this afternoon. The box said 180 min or so, and I finished in about 2 hours.

I wonder if the puzzle designers modeled the building first, and then found a way to "flatten" it into puzzle shapes, or if they actually thought in terms of these construction pieces to begin with and figured out a way for all of them to fit together to look like the final product.

It's very intricate, and I can't imagine someone designing this without some sort of CAD program.

Now that I work in the 3D modeling industry, I can't help but wonder if the process of making these puzzles are similar to that of our customers who does design for sheet metal, where a part gets flattened into metal sheets that gets bent into the final product.