Once a year the graduates of Model making from Arts University Bournemouth put on a London exhibition for the public as well as companies within the industry. The show is organised by 4D models and other universities including the Hertfordshire model making graduates join us. The show is the pinnacle of three years learning and refining techniques and skills ready for the working work and is a chance to not only show-off your work but connect with other students as well as prospective employers.
Unfortunately in the huge rush of preparing for it I forgot to post about it in advance but the Bournemouth model makers will be displaying a secondary show at the arts university which you are free to wonder about and talk to students, the dates for this show are 18th June to the 3rd July.
Apologies for the poor picture, it was a darkened room. 
Photographs of everyone's work on display is available here: New Blades 2015

During the last summer I had an excess supply of resin and silicone, so I decided to make something I'd always wanted; Magneto's helmet.

The first step I took was sculpting the helmet from clay before covering it in a think layer of silicone to pick up the details. After making a two-part fibreglass jacket I was left with a raw cast that needed the eye/mouth pieces cutting out. After a little sanding and priming the piece was sprayed with metallic automotive paint and then the helmet was lined with a purple fabric.

I must first offer my apologies for not posting in nearly a month! I've been hard at work finishing this project so I hope that the following pictures make up for the wait. I'll continue to post progress pictures of it being made in the following weeks but I couldn't resist showing this piece now, so do enjoy!

If you've looked at my portfolio you've no doubt seen the replica of 'The Moment' from Doctor Who. This is so far, the only replica of it I know to exist. So here's an insight into how it was made.

Months of preparation went into this project with scaling and drawing plans from scratch. Thereafter, I had to create all of the vector files for all six faces on Rhino, as seen above. The base of the box was a 1ft cubed MDF box. As you can see, laid out are the mostly laser cut components sprayed with chrome metallic paint.
The digital picture is the 3D model of the corner bracket which was 3D printed and then cast multiple times. The next image shows the 'EL paper' working to back light one of the panels.

The cane is finally finished. The shaft was cast out of a two-part PU resin and hand painted before being sealed with a satin varnish.

The chimneys were simply machined out of chemiwood, an easy material to work with on the lathe and easy to get a good finish on it. By chance, it also has a grain which works perfectly for terracotta on this scale. I have to do a total of around 16, though some have been moulded and cast as seen above. 

As you may have guessed from my post in March, I was making John Hammond's cane from Jurassic Park as a side project, so here's an update!

From the pictures above you can see I managed to find a polished pebble from a shop in Swanage which is nearly the exact dimensions of the one in the film, just a 1mm too wide! So that was promptly moulded in silicone. 
The shaft of the cane was actually turned clay on a makeshift 'Claythe' (get it?). I created a vector of the cane's exact silhouette from overlaying references pictures then laser cutting the silhouette out of acrylic. The wet clay was then turned into the silhouette thus creating the perfect shape that's as close to the film as possible. I then added numerous nicks and distressed it to make it seem like the millions of years old fossilised tail it's supposed to be. It was then ready to cast in Silicone using waste pipe as a make-shift mould jacket.
The final picture displays an already dead (found in a lampshade) Crane Fly half submerged in clear amber tinted resin. The fly species itself is a debated topic but i'll save discussion that for next week!

As you can see, I like my details and these are some of my favorites...

There were laser etched and hand painted with acrylic. The numbers were chemically etched from brass and stuck on.

Back in March I showed the golden Idol about to be moulded and since then it's been cast and even had a plinth made for it!

You might notice that the two are slightly different, well the first one is sprayed gold whereas the second has had brass powder intrinsically added to the resin which was then polished to a shine. Each one weighs nearly 2Kg as they've been back-filled with sand to give an authentic weight.

As a majority of the beefy work as now past, it's onto the finer stuff (and my favorite stuff).

Although mostly self explanatory,  I feel the 3rd picture needs expanding. It's actually a mid-etch shot of the laser cutting deep etching patterns for the pub eaves.