Ian Zych

This is my cardstock box. For this, I cut six identical squares and was able to glue them together along their edges.

This is my cardboard box. This was the next step after making my cardstock box, and immediately I ran into problems; I didn't account for the 1/8 inch thickness of the cardboard, and cut out six identical pieces that didn't fit together. To remedy this, I cut two of the squares down significantly to fit in the square spaces created by the other four pieces put together.

For my logo design, my concept sketches were all over the place. I had no idea what I wanted it to look like, and ended up just compiling a bunch of unrelated drawings that I may be able to make something out of.

After I wasn't coming up with anything I could work with, I decided to start from scratch with my logo and make it a simple as possible (which I should have done from the beginning). I first put this together in illustrator, and my logo in the style of a modified superman symbol.

I still wasn't happy with how my logo looked, and I started to play around with different shapes to go around the letters. I finally settled on a circle, and committed to that. This is the final design in inkscape

Once I had my design finalized, I laser cut it. If i cut it out again, I could definitely make the I considerably darker, although I do like how this looks as is. NOTE: the image is sideways - you are looking at an I and a Z, not an H and an N.

For the 3D printed version of this design, I did the same exact thing, and the logo is designed to be flat on both the top and bottom.

This is my original design for my laser-cut robot called Robit. I wanted to make him to have a simple and practical design while also having room to add detail for future prints or designs.

I laser cut two different versions of Robit. This one is the darker of the two, where the body is etched much deeper than the limbs and pelvic section. The two are different because I was not aware of this nuance. The next time I print this, I will play around with shading to make the joints, limbs, and torso look like different textures or colors.

For my 3D printing projects, I combined them into one culminating print that I had been formulating for a while. This is a science fiction aircraft that I designed earlier this year called the "Starfish." This is the original sketch that I made during first semester.

I took some time and made a 3D model in Tinkercad that was as close to this design as possible. The only major change that was made in the 3D version was that the intake located on the bottom of the fuselage was removed. I am planning on going back and adding it in.

I then split the design into a few printable parts to make it easier for the printer to hold the detail in certain areas, and designed an oblong cylinder to connect the two halves of the fuselage.

The print went well once the original kinks were worked out - the first go at printing the nose had a bit of trouble holding shape, but once it was reset it worked perfectly

The wings and engines were printed in a separate run, which is why they are a different color than the rest of the prototype.

I also had a model P-40 Warhawk kit that I hadn't built, so I decided to do a kit-bash and took the landing gear covers from the P-40 and used them as the nose cannons on the Starfish

For my Vietnam History class, I made a short war film for my final project. One of the stylistic choices that I made for this film was to have white wooden cutouts for the gun props, as opposed to realistic M-16 props. This is a screenshot of one of the opening scenes of the film where the final product can be seen.

For the first step of my prop-making process, I made an M-16 cutout template in Adobe Illustrator, where I just traced over a jpeg of the real rifle. The problem that I ran into was figuring out how to make the mask layer an actual layer, which was difficult to work around and I had to make up a few troubleshooting techniques. I honestly cannot remember what I did, but eh - it worked.

I then moved the file over to the larger Shop Bot that's by the auditorium and cut out an initial prototype. I accidentally made the first rifle too squat, so it ended up being really long and thin. We used this prop in the final film and it looked great anyway, but if you look closely, Michael's gun looks a little thinner than the others.

The last thing I did was give each of the five guns (four normal size and the one with the weird proportions) a double coating of white paint.

All in all, I'm really happy with how the props turned out, and they contrasted the more realistic costumes and scenery in a really stylistic and successful way.

For my final project, I am working on a DIY camera jib/crane.