As mentioned on my about page, I am currently studying at the Iovine and Young Academy, a super exciting cross-disciplinary undergraduate program that teaches us how arts, technology, and business intersect with an emphasis on innovation.
Anyways, I was challenged by a faculty member to create a garden gnome that represented my program to 3D print out. I added the constraint to myself to make this gnome the spiritual successor of the Zen Goblin and have it be printable without supports.
Like a frenzied game of Where's Waldo, here is the brainstorming space for how I mapped out what the garden gnome should look like. I decided on a couple elements that I felt summarized my program well. The gnome should have the letters "IYA" on its shirt/belly, short for "Iovine and Young Academy". It would wear a virtual reality headset to represent our program's place on the cutting edge of technological innovation. Its hands would be in the "Fight on" gesture, a staple of USC school spirit. He'd be wearing Beats headphones as a nod to our founders. And it would be blasting off in a Jetpack, because why not?
Try to spot some of the iterations as I nailed down pose and proportions of the gnome.
This was the main thumbnail sketch I used for reference in the model, as it's where I finally figured out how to balance all the design elements
This is a side profile of the above sketch, where I planned out how I would model the gnome so it could be printed without supports and in two pieces (the gnome, and the plume of smoke). This was also where the gnome took on its official name, Jetpack Gnome.
Here's the final model of the Jetpack Gnome. A couple of things to note:
I modeled the limbs as copies of each other, and then rotated each limb a little bit to breathe a little more life into the model.
The Gnome is designed to print as one piece, jetpack and all, sitting on the 3D printer's build plate. The plume of smoke prints as a separate piece and interfaces with the bottom of the jetpack to support the gnome midair.
The entire gnome is rotated a little bit relative to the plume of smoke to also give his "blast off" a little more energy.
Here's the first 3D print of the Jetpack Gnome. The general response was very positive. Everyone in the program was excited to finally have a pseudo mascot, and the Iovine and Young Academy has heavily featured the Jetpack Gnome since its debut on their social media for different events.
But with the gnome proven a success...it was time to go bigger.
Here's a cool shot I snapped of the Jetpack Gnome being printed out, which also helps demonstrate how the gnome was oriented when printed.
Next I printed the Jetpack Gnome at 200% scale (2x as large as the original). Here they are sitting side by side. The 200% gnome was printed with supports, as the gnome model had some minor overhangs that didn't cause an issue at original scale, but were a little too large for the printer to handle at 200% scale without supports.
With a printer capable of printing a cubic foot at my disposal I knew the Jetpack Gnome had further limits it could be pushed to. Here it is at 300% scale, next to the original Jetpack Gnome and the Big Brother. The white residue in the beats headphones of the Big Daddy is dissolvable support material. This print was so large it could only be attempted once, and I didn't want to risk a failure because of minor overhangs.
To give a sense of scale, here's a silly photo of me holding the original Jetpack Gnome and the Big Daddy Gnome.
Currently, this is where the project ends. However, there is discussion to in the future divide the model into smaller components and print it as a full color assembly at 400% scale.