CONCEPT: I initially found the idea of an adornment pretty challenging, because I don't ever wear anything special, really. Except for my dusty old hat. And then genius struck me, why not design an implement that would turn any regular baseball cap into a much superior propeller hat? Realizing that lightning never strikes twice, I leapt at the idea.
TECHNIQUES: The most important aspect of this is how it connects to the hat. On most (every?) baseball caps, there's a little round nub thing on the very top. I figured this nub was probably the only way to attach something like this. So, I started by getting a perfect measurement of the dimensions of this nub, creating a model of said nub, and building the propeller around it.When measuring the nub, I noticed the calipers pinched underneath the nub really well, so I reproduced this in the model. Instead of enveloping the nub, the connection point is almost like a round shear that pinches around the nub. Surprisingly, this connection is very sturdy and tight. The upper component is a largely hollow cylinder separated into two halves. Those halves have two rings in them that are offset that a central piece slides through, holding the two halves together and further strengthening the connection to the hat. The central piece has a platform area which the propeller rests on, with a rounded top which a cap clips onto, keeping the propeller from falling off. In Rhino, no special techniques were used or needed, largely the most important thing was getting the very right measurement for the nub. Besides that, pretty much the only thing I used was Boolean Unions and Boolean Differences, with Loft used to make the propeller.
MATERIALS: For the nature of this, I went with a plastic rendering. I didn't think it'd look good gaudy. The rendering materials were colored plastics. The print material is ABS plastic, which ended up feeling pretty good. Some fixing was required, I had to sand down most of the connection points so that everything clicked together. After that, it was a simple matter of using an airbrush to prime and paint the model to match the rendering.
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