BSC2023 zemjw A Spaceman Came Travelling

[zemjw]

Bath Salts (actual, not any street slang), vinyl floor tiles, polystyrene, 3d modelling and 3d printing. What can possibly go wrong

Pictures and background stuff once I work out how to upload to the gallery

[Vanvlak]

I still have to create a gallery!
And bath salts? oh wow, this should be fun 

[snitcythedog]

You had me at bath salts.   

[AKULA]

Bath salts 

Sounds interesting!

[has.been]

Bath Salts (actual, not any street slang),

Ah go on, come clean on this.

[Daeothar]

Ok; mysterious...

But it sounds like you already thought this through. I'm curious now.

Best of luck 

[zemjw]

Clickbait teaser introduction aside, yeah, there is a plan...

A few years ago I saw a picture of a floating obelisk in a book called Beginner's Guide to Sketching (which now seems to be out of print and stupidly expensive on Amazon). I liked the idea so made my own.



Two Christmases ago I was looking around the seasonal stuf in ASDA and came across a bath salt thing in the shape of a spaceman



I thought that it would make a good statue, so bought one. The plan was to sculpt a copy of it, as dissolving scenery didn't seem a good idea. However, it has been sitting on my desk since then, about 20cm from where I'm typing this.

This theme (not the one I voted for ) caused the two ideas to jump together in my head, giving me the idea for, well, this



The current plan is to make it relatively pristine, with the "magic" keeping the jungle at bay. However, it will have started to encroach where the obelisk has fallen.

The figures in the picture are 28mm foot to top of head, and the thing sits on an A4 foam PVC base. I'm planning to either have the spaceman just standing there, or do something with magnets, so it should all break down for storage.

There are a couple of big unknowns for me

1. I've never worked with XPS foam, so gluing and painting are learning curves
2. I'm planning to use vinyl floor tiles with a hexagonal pattern for the floor, and I have no idea if they'll take paint

The obelisks are 99% done, although I need to print out new ones for this. The 1% to do is to add runes to the bottom of the blocks for the fallen ones. After that, it's just feeding the printer.

The only thing I've had to buy is some acetate rod for between the blocks. It should turn up tomorrow.

I'm blocking out the astronaut, but it still has a long way to go. Still, my 3d mojo largely evaporated last Spring, so I'm hoping this entices it back out to play.

Things will change (the side walls may get higher), but for now, that's my plan

I am planning to put the files up on Thingiverse. However, the meshes are very dense, which, while not a problem for the slicer, leads to some very large files. I did a test in Zbrush and I can reduce the polygon count by at least 50% without any loss of detail that I can see, so that's on the to-do list at some point.

[Golgotha]

I have no idea what this is going to look like but that then is part of the fun all the best with the build.

[FifteensAway]

zemjw: don't know if others having issues but I am not seeing any images.

I'm sure there are other options but I use a Google blog I created (fairly simple and free) to post photos.  Then I copy the image address and use  the left most bottom row above icons to post the image in a thread here on LAF.  Hope that helps. 

You can use the same "copy image address" to pull photos for various sites - just me mindful of copyright restrictions.

[zemjw]

That's annoying  I copied them into the google photos album I use for forum posts, so the permissions should be there for sharing. They show up for me when I'm logged in here, but not in an anonymous tab, so something has gone haywire 

I shall fix that this evening, thanks for pointing it out

[zemjw]

Right, they should be showing correctly now. They certainly show up for me in an anonymous tab, so fingers crossed. Not sure what happened, but I may have copied them from outside the album, rather than within it

I'm wondering about having the obelisks be metal, rather than stone, so I may play about with that. I've sliced the hovering versions, so I'll print one tomorrow. I've gone for 0.1mm height, which is the best my printer can do. I suspect that's overkill for this, but the lines in the photos of the current ones surprised me slightly, so I'd like to try to reduce the banding.

[has.been]

When you talk 'THREE-DEE' I have absolutely no idea what it means.

But, now I can see the pretty pictures  I love the idea.

[FifteensAway]

Pleased to report images are now visible to me.  Curious concept.  Have fun with it.

[Daeothar]

That's going to be a great build! I really like the concept drawing; this clarifies all the previous teases about bathsalts and 3D modeling 

[AndrewBeasley]

I'm planning to use vinyl floor tiles with a hexagonal pattern for the floor, and I have no idea if they'll take paint

You could try enamel paint as an undercoat - I am sure I've spilt that and had issues with the clean up before!