The very first thing I did was blow up the sketch. So I iterated on the approved design to nail down proportions before moving on to the full CAD model. The time to iterate heavily is when the costs (in materials and time) are low.
The visible seams and fasteners, I did a design refresher by going down to Urban Ore (a local recycling place) and looking at old power tools. That was actually the biggest design challenge being both wild and grounded, having both a prop-like quality and a real item of technology quality. And have some plastics and some pinks in the design as well, to fit both the period aesthetic and the retro atomic Tiki culture aesthetic as well. It wanted to be basically metal.either brushed or chrome.
All that really needed sketching and approval after that was the side swooshes, whether to put jewels or other markings on the power settings dial, and the grip lines of the hilt - which was actually a happy accident, as I had originally drawn them true to the horizontal but accidentally modeled them orthogonal to the front edge of the grip instead. But I'd already zeroed in on dirigible shape, boomerang curves for the grip, Cadillac/jet fighter fin, and of course insulator rings. It would be designed in the same clamshell sections as a real manufactured version might have, up to and including using bolts and screws to connect everything together.ĭesign-wise: the final shape was almost directly inspired by a very cartoony poster. This also decided a novel and risky approach to abandon the usual tools of clay sculpt and slush cast and to design the entire thing in CAD, to be realized by either subtractive (CNC milling) or additive (3d printing) techniques. Instead, we narrowed over countless sketches into electric-drill like shapes and finally into the classic bulbous pistol shape, the "dirigible body" on a grip with rings around the business end. But, alas, we could not find any way to mix metal parts which would be suitable for lathing with wood furniture that could be CNC routed (or cut with scroll saw if need be). Indeed, fabrication can follow design intent real metal has a verité that resin casts may not. But the two are related, as are form and fabrication. It is not correct that form follows function. Except it wanted to have some grounding in reality to be as fantastic as the rayguns of Forbidden Planet, but to have (to in fact share with those excellent props) the kinds of details and treatments of a real object. The spec for this from the client was Atom Punk, Raygun Gothic, 50's-60's SF of the whimsical lean Barbarella, The Jetsons.
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