After a long hiatus this summer, this is my first real blog post in a while. But summer is pretty much over, and I am ready to start things up again. So here we go!

This past week, I patricipated in World Art Drop Day, where artists all over the world left little gifts for people to find. Just check out out the hashtag #ArtDropDay in Twitter, Instagram and most likely Facebook. Or you can go to this page where it all started.

Last year, I drew out a series of artist sketch cards and hid them in various locations while taking my son to his daycare. This meant a lot of outdoor locations. And a torrential rainstorm. Read about it here. This year I wanted something a little more durable.

I fist started out with the idea of vinyl stickers. And while I did find Some nice places online, it was just too much money for just a few stickers I would need. It’s not like I was plastering the entire city with stickers!

I decided to 3D print a figurine instead. I had already settled on a theme of robots and it seemed like a natural. I hadn’t printed out anything of my own in 3D for a while so it was a good exercise to do.

I originally started out with a sketch. I sketched out quite a few different robots until I settled upon the design of the pillbot.

Once I had a sketch done, I used my iPad and a program from Autodesk called 123D Design to build most of the parts.

Once I had all the main pieces put together, I put everything into a 3D program called Blender. Here I could fine tune some shapes and get him posed.

Once I had the little robot posed, I output an STL file and sent him off to be 3D printed at the nice folks at Shapeways. He is printed out on a very fine detailed translucent plastic. I then quickly gave him a very thin coat of primer to help bring out the details.

Enjoy!