View 1
I wanted to make an animal flashlight, and first considered an angler fish and a dragon. I chose to make a firefly, where the flashlight goes in backwards and lights up the tail. I decided to include feet so that it can stand on its own. I created an inside piece that allows the flashlight to turn on when you press on the mouth.
Ghosted painted black
I am not a fan of real bugs, so I simplified the design to look more like a cute cartoon than the real thing. I designed it so that the flashlight goes in backward and makes the end light up. Looking at these images for reference [
one,
two,
three], I created the butt using three ellipses and combining them with a boolean union. I created the rest of the body by drawing a curve and using the revolve tool Professor Scott demonstrated in class. I made the legs using four cylinders that I exploded, deleted the end caps, and combined using blend surface. I created the wings by making an elongated ellipse, rebuilding it to include more points, and turning on the point display. I selected the middle points and scaled them in to create the separation for the wings. I curved the antennas, legs, and wings using cage edit. I also used cage edit to curve the body slightly. The mouth is made of two curved truncated cones combined into one piece. I created the eyes as spheres and used boolean union to add them to the body. I revolved the given cyan curve that represented the flashlight so I could use it to create the hole using boolean difference. I split the body using a projected curve to separate the lighted butt from the rest. Following the tutorials linked on eLearning about creating a screw twist, I created and combined another piece of geometry with the screw. I combined it to the butt with boolean union. I hollowed out it and the rest of the butt using boolean difference. I then used boolean difference to create the available space for the screw in the rest of the body. I decided to make all of the smaller parts separate, the legs, mouth, and antennas, both to cut down on support material needed and to try and keep them from breaking. I positioned them on the body and created the holes for them using boolean difference. To solve the problem of hitting the button to turn the flashlight on, I created another small piece that is one short, wide cylinder with another long, narrow cylinder that will connect to the mouth. I hollowed out the appropriate space in the body. When combined, the flashlight should be able to turn on by pressing on the mouth.
Layer assignments
I separated the body into two parts to materialize the middle of the bug as black and the front as a softer pink. I used a black chrome material for the middle, I added a small scaled noise texture so that the black did not look perfect. I toned down the shine. The pink was a soft plastic material with a marble color map scaled down smaller. The legs, antennas, and mouth are all a mold tech material with a color map design that uses a black for the flat areas and a pink for some of the curved. The eyes are a hammered metal to give the geometric look. The wings are a soft plastic with a brushed bump texture to have the lines as in some of the reference images. All of the materials are scaled small so that the nuances are not very noticeable, but they make the materials imperfect. I wanted to contribute to the cartoon quality of the model. I added a small cylinder inside and gave it a light material to simulate the light. I turned on ground reflections for rendering to show how the butt will light up.
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View 3
---------------------------------------------After printing---------------------------------------------
In process 1
In process 2
Finished 1
When I got my 3D printed pieces, the butt would not screw onto the body as I had designed it to. I used various files to work on the plastic until it attached properly. I also had to use files on the legs and antennas to make sure they would fit in the holes. I had originally designed a hole in the head to use a piece attached to the mouth to hit the button of the flashlight. I had it set up, but the mouth was forced to sit so far away from the face that it looked wrong. I instead glued the mouth directly on. Instead, now that the screwing mechanism works, I will use it to get to the flashlight to toggle it on and off. I first used hot glue to attach the legs, but they just popped off. Instead I used super glue specifically for plastic and they held strong. I also used it when some of the feet broke off, and it created a strong hold. After attaching all of the pieces I painted on a few coats of matte mod-podge to seal it. I used acrylic paints to add the color. I used
this image as reference to decide on colors. For much of it, I painted a base color first. For example, I painted red beneath the orange and yellow beneath the black near the tail. Because the bug looks cartoon like, I decided to include mostly solid colors. I added a small bit of metallic gold to the yellow on the tail; this way the tail shone a bit but was not entirely metallic. I did the same with a silver in black and red for the eyes to help them stand out from the rest of the black head.
Finished 2
Finished 3
Finished 4
Finished 5
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