Michelle Ignacz and Sam Vandygrif: Week 13 Pepakura (Progress 02 Finished)

For final construction of our project, the beetle head was designed to be 26 inches wide, 42 inches long and 10 inches tall to allow for the folds from the pekapura program to be able to have enough room compared to the original scale of half its current size. During the assignment of layout in PEP, I had issues trying to get everything to lay out right to allow for everything to be separate and not cross over each other. In the long run, I ended up splitting many large pieces into some three sided faces to allow for this issue to be corrected. From here trying to import it into Rhino for final layout on the cut sheet turned into a long ordeal. Whether just missing a few things or forgetting to do another I was eventually able to produce a working cut sheet for printing. As I think about I wish I took a picture of the physical pieces disassembled, but a cut sheet should give an accurate representation of what it was like.

Layers/ No Edges

Cut Sheet:

Pepakura Cut Sheet

Rhino Cut Sheet

Assembled:

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Assembly 01

Assembly 02

Assembly 03

Assembly 04

Assebly 05

Assembly 06

From here, I had asked Andrew Scott for personal advice as to what would make the model pop and shine like dicroic glass or as an actual beetle's shell. Suggesting to use shellac or polyurethane to help waterproof it and then using iridescent paint medium in my choice of color for the acrylics would help give it a pearlescent shine. To finish off the shine I went ahead and applied a clear coat of satin finish to help seal and give it the last push it needed to to give a type of shell like appearance. For color I had used a mixture of black, red, gold, and the irredescent paint medium to give its color. For application use, I had used a sponge and blotted the colors along so that it had a more natural diffusion of colors wherever the colors met. The final product turning I to a rust colored elephant stag beetle.

Paint 01

Paint 02

Paint 03

Paint 04

Paint 05

Paint 06

Working on the Keyshots as my last priority I tried to do what I can to give it a metallic appearance to the whole body of the shell, anodized rough red with a color map of wood grain using red and black, and giving the eyes a black glass like appearance by using glass cubes and shrinking the scale down to 0.06. The antennae and remaining pincers I used a wood material due to the fact that I did not want them to pop out as much as the shell and it was the nicest thing I can think of for its object use. The Keyshot rendering is quite simple compared to what the final product's turnout became. For the lighting effect, I used HDRI Iceland lighting to help give the shell a dichroic look to the outside due the lighting having a light tinge of green to it which reflects wonderfully on the metal.

Shot 01

Shot 02

Shot 03

Shot 04

Shot 05