CELTY + ANIME BOSTON 2013

At Anime Boston this year (2013), I cosplayed as the character Celty Sturluson, the modern take on a Dullahan from the anime "Durarara!!" (exclamations points included). Boy was this an adventure, from decision to materials to construction and then to actual physical cosplay. Let me break this down - what I did, what I would do next time, how it all went, etc. And hopefully, my documented experiences here would help inspire any future Celty cosplayers!

In truth, this isn't so much an instruction blog for how to make a Celty helmet and scythe, but more of a trial and error log, tips and advice column, and experimentation report from an amateur cosplayer. But I digress-

LET'S START!

WARNING: This is a VERY LONG and PHOTO HEAVY POST! Read on after the break!

TL;DR points:

• Start early! If you decide to make your own helmet and scythe, make sure you have the materials well ahead of time!
• Plan ahead! Working with Bondo requires an extraordinarily and painstakingly tedious amount of sanding, and any sort of paintwork needs time to dry!
• Have plenty of sleep and rest! It was interesting to note that most of my freehanding work did come in the late hours of the night and while they still managed to come out quite well, I do NOT recommend this method to others. Sleep is important, especially when working with tools and details!

(Read on!)

ROSES, SHAVINGS, AND CURLS

I thought I would continue my rose-theme from last Valentine's Day, which was a fruit and veggie salad made from tomato and strawberry roses (post found here: [Valentine Roses]), and make something rose-themed for this year's Valentine's Day as well.

The idea for this year - a rose made with wood shavings. I, with the help of Charles and some other MITERS people (Bailey, Heidi, Steve), shaved off curly wood shavings from a piece of wood, which I arranged into rose-like shapes. This was my first experience using the shaving-wood-tool, and it turned out to be really fun! A bit late in the making (though the idea was formulated a few days before V-day), but here it is. Happy super-belated Valentine's Day!

Above: Roses made from wood shavings!

Above: Man strength! Thanks for the help, guys!

Above: From this...

Above: ...to this!

(Closer shot of the big rose)

Above: The rose-arrangement with Spray-on Adhesive.

Looks like snow!

D*CON AND KURONEKO-BOT

Aug 31-Sep 4, 2012 - My very first Dragon*Con, and Robot Battle. Belated as it is, let me share a few of the things I learned about building my first antweight robot.

TL;DR:

Don't use motors encased in plastic for your competition robots.
Don't skimp on good wheels.
Learn to drive.

You can't beat real-time combat experience in improving your robot design skills.

Above: Before leaving for Atlanta, GA.

Above: Final design.

Read more...

BRIGHT LIGHTS

(Side note: I was actually planning to update yesterday, but the original RGBeta demo video was somehow corrupted and wouldn't upload past 50%. So here's the post today!)

Halfway through soldering on the LED strip wires, I realized that I could have made the job simpler for myself if I had created just 4 rails (common anode, red, green blue) for each LED strip to attach to, instead of making separate individual connectors for each LED strip that would attach to the actual electronics board. Plus, it would have also been a much cleaner and simpler design! On the upside, the lights all worked, and now each strip could be controlled!

(Running off default Arduino PWM frequency - might change later)

Above: RGBeta lights demo!

Oh, MITERS people - listen to how awesome and random they are.

Above: TANGLE OF WIRES, OMG. ><

Plan: I'm going to hot glue all the solder joints, tape the connection wires together so they're not in that sprawling mess like in the photo above, and construct the box! Unfortunately, I have no access to a laser printer anytime soon, so there's 2 options: (1) cut and shape a box by hand from scrap wood (I'll have to make a new CAD drawing for this), or (2) use an old scanner as a base. When I had finished the soldering and was contemplating how to make the box, Steve from MITERS offered up an old scanner that was lying around. Though it's a bit too large to fit inside my backpack, the depth of the scanner looked perfect for the distance between the LEDs and the diffuser - I'll keep it as a Plan B at least!

Also, since this was the most soldering I've done in one sitting yet, I learned to use a new trick! I bundled up each colored wire together and soldered the ends all in one round - I should have thought of this earlier, haha. In fact, the veteran solder-ers all replied they knew of this trick already! I guess that's what experience is all about...

Above: Group soldering in process.

On another note, the school semester started this week! I have some things I want to build and do during this time, so hopefully my time won't be completely eaten by my schedule!

SOLIDWORKS + RGBETA

Quick update! Ever since I downloaded Solidworks yesterday, I've discovered that Solidworks is so much fuuun!  I turned my messy layer sketch of RGBeta's shell...

Above: Messy thought doodles!

...into something that looks much neater and makes more sense!

Above: It looks like a box! xD

Above: A semi-transparent view of RGBeta's box - the completely transparent view was

much too messy for me to get a good angle on.

It measures 13x12 in, scaled to fit in my backpack, opens up in both portrait and landscape mode, has a hidden paper storage section, and has a small pencil case to the bottom right! (Box is suited for right handers!) The upper right corner stores all the electrical components that drives the LED strips that will be located in the top box. The 3 open grooves up top are meant to hold the sliding potentiometers that control the RGB values of the LEDs. Now the only things that are missing from this model of the frame are the hinges and tiny locks (that keep everything from falling apart)! But fortunately, there's only a small amount of adjustment that will need to happen to this Solidworks model when I secure the ones I want, and the hinges won't affect the overall structure or size much. Now, how to find access to a laser printer..............

In the meantime, I'll be playing around with splines, haha.

PAPER MODEL LIGHTBOX

I was having a bit of trouble designing the pieces of my lightbox in my head and on paper, so I decided to make a quick paper model of what I wanted it to do. Next step: CADing it all in Solidworks so I can laser cut the frame!

Above: Lightbox paper model demo (sideways for some reason),

with Charles ([etotheipiplusone]) and Bailey ([ISOPACK]) discussing laser cutters.

...I need to cut my nails, haha. The lightbox will be able to prop open in both portrait and landscape mode, as well as have some room to fit sheets of paper and pens in between the layers.

Above: Initial thought process with the paper model lightbox.

Above: Paper model lightbox unfolded!

There's still a lot of soldering I need to do! >o<;

LEARNING ARDUINO + RGBETA

Back in Fall 2011, I decided to build a RGB variable color lightbox for a Power Electronics class (6.131). Since the existing [sleek] LED lightboxes on the market were about $50+, emitted white light, and didn't do much else, I wanted to make something that could do more. I wanted to be able to adjust the light color, the slope of the lightbox screen, be able to make and attach custom widgets (like my sliding T-square, or a future eraser-crumb gutter / pen holder, hidden shelves), etc - almost like a portable desk. For the class, I had to satisfy the power electronics part, so in hindsight, maybe I should have actually just made a motor controller. But afterwards, I still really wanted to make the actual lightbox product, so I started over, this time using an ARDUINO! For the first time! :D

Here's what I've got so far - a mess of wires (soon to be sorted), and 3 sliding 10K potentiometers on the left  that control the red, green, and blue color values. For the background soundtrack, you can listen to the two Jordan's at MITERS (the female of whom has an awesome blog: [T3CHNOLOCHIC]) discuss 'hella Bohemian (?)' for some reason:

(Apologies for shaky one-handed iPhone recording!)

Above: Video of RGBeta testing.

Thanks to Charles ([ETOTHEIPIPLUSONE]) for supplying me with the Arduino Nano and LED strips!

Arduino's are awesome (haha)! I write a bit of code, upload it to the Arduino, connect it to some LEDs and potentiometers... and things magically work! Plus, what's cool is that this little Arduino can do all the PWM magic digitally that I had to do analog-ly before for my class. Here was the first thing I made using it:

Above: Yay single RGB LED! Making it fade using an Arduino Nano.

In the above photo, I'm actually using a leftover Piranha LED that I bought for class, shipped from the UK. These little RGB LEDs gave me more trouble than expected, as the supplier website didn't have a datasheet, and after testing them I found that the LEDs were common ANODE [+] (whereas my design was tailored to common CATHODE [-]). Here are some surviving photos of my RGB lightbox, ALPHA version:

Above: It uses 3 buck converters, and (in this photo) is missing

2 power resistors and 2 potentiometers. The lightboard stacks on top.

Above: RGB lightbox Alpha testing. Sadly doesn't work quite as well,

and (in this photo) I've already blown a piranha LED just testing the first row, haha.

Comparing with what I have now, RGBeta is not as impressive looking as RGB Alpha, which had 3 legit-looking inductors and power resistors, as well as a separate board complete with 3 H-bridges (only lowsides used). But RGBeta is definitely cleaner and lighter, as well as less painful to make and debug. In fact, the only major debugging issue I ran into was because I forgot to make a common ground (my most common mistake), which ended up creating a flickering unstable light that semi-responded to the potentiometer slides. Grounding issues aside, RGBeta was definitely much easier to create.

Above: RGBeta is definitely more boss that RGB Alpha.

Side note: I've been unknowingly shortening my current 'RGB lightbox' to 'RGBeta' (pronounced R - G - Beta), since I consider this version the Beta version (the Alpha one being the one I made for class). Though, 'Beta' is probably not the right term to use, since this isn't a software release. What's more, every time I say it, it reminds me of RGVeda, the debut manga of CLAMP, and RigVeda [wiki], a sacred text of Hinduism - even though my lightbox is completely unrelated, haha. :)

Why do I want a lightbox? I confess, I'm biased as an artist and I'll mainly be using it to ink over sketches and learn animation. However, because it'll be a portable desk, the uses for it are limitless. (If I add a detachable cushion-y underside to the lightbox, I could set my laptop on top and have a comfy laptop lap desk, too! :D ). I discovered another use when Bailey ([ISOPACK]) was using a light to match up 2 printed circuit designs (for the top and bottom layer of the double-sided copper clad), in preparation for etching.

Above: Bailey's printed designs, in prep for DIY etching a printed circuit board.

I just need to solder on some more LED strips, provide a portable power supply, transfer circuit from breadboard to PCB (or other), design the frame and then build it!

In other news, I'm assistant choreographer to the 'Hack, Punt, Tool' original MIT screenplay put on by the MIT Musical Theater Guild, and hectic production week starts next week! It's my first time helping them out, and they're a cool bunch - lots of creative set/prop/costume builders! I was talking with the Head Choreographer TaunTaun, and we were lamenting how there wasn't a program that could help choreographers and directors do blocking and formations. As a dancer who has choreographed for several people, I also find it sad that the best of us resort to drawings and powerpoint slides to convey position. But usually in the end, all of us resort to pointing and physically moving people to where they're supposed to be. But that approach is time-consuming and often confusing for the dancers. If there was a program that could allow the choreographer to create and edit formations of people, atop a background of their choice (stage or theater set), synced with a soundtrack of music or lines (basically like a UI to making a simple animation), we wouldn't have to resort to doing something like this:

Above: An approach we used to block out a scene in Killian Court,

using spools as cast members. Later, one of the directors even made a

mini model of the set so we could visualize the space.

It sounds like this program could help anyone that just needs a quick way to explain a series of positions - dance formations, chess/checkers/go/board game strategies, WWII troop movements for history presentations, sports play strategies, film/book/comic storyboarding, re-creation of events, etc. This idea already ended up on the list of things I wanted to make, so let's hope I get to it soon!

SLIDING T-SQUARE + SKETCHES

I've always been big into the whole Japanese anime and manga scene, and there was a period that I drew almost consistently. In the past few years however, I haven't drawn much in relation, but I'm going to try and keep improving! Expect more sketches in the future, but in the meantime, here's a bit of what I've drawn and doodled in the past few days. I'm currently working on a commission I can't reveal yet, and I've plans for a doujinshi if not a webcomic as well. But time will tell, I'll post more of my ideas as they come!

That last one, the super-sketchy one with Miku on some sort of bipedal machine, is still a work in progress! You'll definitely see more of her in various other getups. :) (You can also see a little of where I possibly could have gotten influenced, haha)

Back to my building things, I had this flimsy $1 T-square that I wanted to mount onto my (wip) lightbox as a detachable widget. Most T-squares are standalone, cheap and really good tools, but I personally found them unstable if I wasn't drawing on the edge of a table or a raised surface. So I thought it'd be a nifty add-on for my (future) lightbox - the added track on the side would make the T-square stable, always aligned, and if I wanted it for something else, detachable!

Above: Finished Sliding T-Square.

It was made using a cheap curtain track (wall mounts included), a set of small shower rollers, and some screws and rubber stoppers.  The shower rollers actually fitted very snugly inside the railing, which was a pleasant surprise since I had eye-estimated it at the store. Here's a closeup:

Above: Small shower rollers, screws included.

Above: Attached to the curtain wall mounts like so.

The rubber stoppers I had were easily stripped inside using the screw, so I cut the outside of the hole out to make way for a metal washer that would hopefully catch the screw and not damage the stopper. The last stopper still kept slipping off, and since I had scrounged up the stoppers in MITERS and couldn't find any more, I just superglued that stopper. xD

Above: The operation.

Above: Front and back views of the completed widget.

I originally had wanted to use each of the wall mounts separately, and place them at the opposite ends of the T-square head. But that was too unstable, so I tried to fit both rollers and stoppers on the same wall mount, like so:

Above: A failed attempt at being thrifty.

But that turned out to clash with the shape of the T-square, which had a square depression on the back that was smaller than the length of the stoppers surface. Thus! I opted for connecting the two wall mounts instead of buying more rollers. All that was left was to glue the T-square on the rubber stoppers (using GOOP), and voila! A completed widget:

Above: Ready to roll! (hehe)

Next up on my agenda: 1) redesign my lightbox schematics, and 2) work on comic. I wonder when I'll actually start my scooter, hmm...

NEW YEARS

I celebrated New Year's at MITERS, the MIT Electronics Research Society. And though I really should have been working on finishing a past project and my [currently non-existent] electric scooter, I decided to instead do a bit of arts and crafts before the Times Square ball dropped. Here's what I ended up with:

Above: White flower and yellow tiny butterflies made of ZIP-TIES!

Above: Close up of the yellow butterflies - they're detachable!

Above: Wiggle stereoscopy!

The flower part was made from winding these large, 3-ft long white zip-ties found in the back of MITERS. The tiny butterflies used 3 zip ties as well, though much smaller in size - 2 for the wings and 1 for the body. After adding a hair clip when I got home, the hairpiece was complete! Here's a pic of me wearing it:

Above: Wearing the hairpiece, and looking asian.

The more I think about my new (and first!) blog, the more excited I get! Here, I'll be blogging about all the things I build and create - from drawings to dances to my EE projects to the random things I'll make at MITERS.

Here's to you, 2012!