Started back in on some digital illustration work I had begun as part of working on both the Enterprise cross-section studies and for the workbee schematics, before the opportunity to interview Richard Taylor came up. And that was working up new and improved human figures to use to establish ergonomic and scale/clearances in future schematics and illustrations.
Well back in December I had a motherboard and drive issue with my iMac, and after that, was my son coming home for the holiday, then I took a slight break from the workbee while I still try and get better reference material for the aft view of it as well as the enigmatic bottom view.
I have spent the past few evenings, when not battling driving during a snow-storm that shut down the Portland metro area, working on 3D modeling some of the parts of the workbee spine.
I got a little side-tracked over the weekend in that I began working on some preliminary cargo pod illustrations. These will eventually be part of the cargo-train attachment on a few of the workbees.
A big step forward last night and today. After working on some test 3D models to do some 3D printing for the workbee parts, I uploaded the initial upper hull piece to Shapeways, and it is now in production.
Well, I have been working with the initial draft artwork for the workbee spine. And it is as I imagined. Insanely small and pushing the envelope of being able to be cut, folded and built.
Tonight I had some success building the upper half of a workbee, this time running three of the fiber optic filaments, and then attaching the newest set of yellow printed PVC vinyl tape panels.
Tonight I assembled a decent transparency layer, and tested out threading six 0.25mm fiber optic filaments into the workbee. It was on the whole successful, though one of the side running light filaments moved while I was curing the UV adhesive, and it snapped inside the upper shell.
A quick update on this evenings progress with the workbees. Continue reading
It has been nearly 2 weeks since posting about my recent pilgrimage to Seattle for the Star Trek 50th Anniversary exhibit. While I have not posted since then, I have actually been working a lot in trying to solve many of the various build issues with the workbees.
Third Wave Design 