Alias Design has published my latest in my Devil in the Details series. In this episode, I show a methodology for creating geometry that looks geometric but ‘feels’ organic. My intent with this piece was not so much teach a set of tools, but a way to ’see’; being able to identify problem surfaces and know how to achieve a better result.

Last summer, my awesome wife gave me the Ultimate Collector’s Edition Star Wars Millennium Falcon. She’s so awesome!

It was a super fun build and without sounding like a “what I did last summer” essay, it took me a little over 45 hours to put together.

Of course, that included time to organize the parts – which covered our dinning room table with both leaves inserted…

And time for a few ceremonial in-progress photos (although not nearly enough)…

And the final piece!!!

Did I mention how awesome my wife is? She’s pretty awesome – and then she got awesomer!

For Christmas, Santa (a.k.a my awesome wife) brought me the Lego Star Destroyer. This was another super fun build – although it only took me about 19 hours to complete. The parts were pretty well pre-sorted in the box and there are many fewer little details to slow you down than on the Falcon – not to mention the whole Falcon is asymmetric; meaning you can’t build large sections in duplicate like on the Destroyer.

Wading waist deep through Lego Star Wars replica’s got me wondering – If I have this monster Lego Falcon  kit, but wanted a relative scale Star Destroyer to hide it on, how big would that have to be. It turns out, bigger than I could ever build – 178 ft in length!

But what about the other way around? I have a monster Star Destroyer. Could I make a tiny little Falcon to go on it?

Well it’s pretty small. It’s not even an inch in length. So I whipped-up a quick CAD model in Alias and sent it off to our 3D printer at work. The thing is so small it only took 6 minutes to build on the FDM.

Designing it was fun too. I wanted it to be a functional Lego piece and the only way to do so was to make it only one stud big. It has a hole on the underside, just a like a real Lego piece would and a single Lego stud on it’s dome – just in case I ever want to attach any additional Lego to it.

Spending a few hours researching the proper size of the Falcon and building the CAD for the Lego part, I inevitably stumbled upon Tim Ketzer’s site. I was enchanted. I also have a new hobby…

Has it been a month (or more) already? So it has, and Alias Design has posted another tutorial. This time I take a look at a quick method for dealing with semi-complex mechanics in appearance models.

This is the first in a three part series called the “Devil in the Details”. I’ll go through a variety of seemingly small issues that I come across as a designer that make all the difference in a successful presentation of a concept. Enjoy.