Eugene Murphy
D-Tech Dynasty 2
SAIL
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Portfolio
About Me: I'm 17 years old and I attend Foothill Technology High School. I thoroughly enjoy mathematics and I hope to major in business at UCLA. My hobbies center around exercise and going to the gym.
Blog Post #1, January 21-31: This project was my first lead and it was very enjoyable as I had a lot of creative control, but also I did end up running into some issues along the way. I had to order some specific heat transfer vinyl colors and the lavender one came with very confusing exclusive instructions that ended up causing some problems when pressing it to the shirt, but we did get them to stick in a flat, normal manner after some testing. Cutting the vinyl was the scariest part because I believed that the details of the bee would be lost, but it actually came out fantastically. After some back and fourth with design, designing and cutting of vinyl, and heat pressing it on with some slight issues, we made some nice profit and figured out how to successfully heat press on products.
Blog Post #2, February 3-7: This week we finished up assembling our trophies for the soldier project/house joust. We ran into some small problems with gluing some of the bases to the bodies of the "Best Picture Award"s, but besides that it went pretty perfectly. Jake and I worked on printing out the posters for the joust and that went pretty flawlessly too. The only problem we ran into was a super small black ink blot on the top left corner of two of the posters, but we quickly figured out how to line the printing paper up better when loading it into the canon printer and that solved that. From this project I feel like I really learned how to use the canon printer.
Blog Post #3, February 10-13: This week we completed the production of a job for guitar picks. We laser cut the general shape for the picks and then confirmed the shape and thickness with the seller, so we could go on to some sanding and more detailed shaping. We ran into very minimal problems while sanding with the Dremel, as it burned a little of the wood, but overall did not affect the feel or look drastically. After shaping, we polished most of them up with mineral oil and one with lacquer, as a test. We ended up using this job as a test for guitar picks so we only charged $4.00 for the job, in the future we are planning to charge more due to design and work time.
Blog Post #4, February 18-21: This week Jake and I finished up the house joust for the Disney Cross Country Picture. We decided to image trace some of the original image to make it pop and then overlay the finished image trace over the original photo and blur the background to create a really cool difference between the two images. We of course also included the date, names, and name of the trip. During this project we never really ran into any issues, just some changes in the design. Besides that we are still looking for more jobs to get some income, but while it is slow I am planning on designing some pants (possibly with vinyl).
Blog Post #5, February 24-28: This week Jake and I began figuring out how to create a design and cut out for packaging for the up coming house joust on Scosche's product. We focused mainly on the cut out of the box's shape because we do not yet know what the product will be that we are designing for. The biggest challenge we came up to was implementing space for plastic windows on the box. We do not exactly know how to properly create a window for plastic without just gluing it in, so for right now that is our solution. Hopefully by next week we can finalize the general type of box design we want and be ready for whatever Scosche wants to give us.
We used this as inspiration:
Blog Post #6, March 2-6: This week Jake and I worked on a shirt design that came from a random doodle on Inkscape. For a simple explanation, we were experimenting with the calligraphy tool and found some nice methods to doodle with. We continued and tried finding some nice shapes for design that were appealing enough to possibly wear. After we finished up with four or so designs we decided to vinyl heat press one onto a black t-shirt and it came out flawlessly. By far it was my best heat transfer with vinyl so far plus we already have some people who have offered to buy a shirt. Jake and me are looking into getting some more blank shirts and selling some next week.
Blog Post #7, March 9-13: This week Jake and I confirmed some interest in our shirt designs and set out an order for some blanks. We ordered 2 large black tees, 1 medium black tee, and one cherry red tee to get us started off. We plan to sell each one for about 18 dollars, or something in that ball park. Beyond that, I also created another design for t-shirts or hoodies, so hopefully that will get us some more interest and revenue. Jake and I also completed a rough draft for the Eggertsen sticker job and we still just need to speak to her about them to see if she wants anything specific, if not we already have an egg design with her name on it.
September 9-13: I started off my entrepreneurship experience with, so far, most of the safety tests completed. I began my first "project" with my house in which we started to laser cut our logo for our sign. Our first couple of trials came out well, but we did end up running into some speed bumps when trying to vector and raster in the same cut. The cut began to burn when vectoring the letters at the bottom of our logo, so we made some adjustments for, hopefully, a more successful cut later. Just in the first couple of weeks, I feel like I'm learning a lot and I hope to continue through out the rest of the year with a similar trend.
September 16-20: This week I worked on completing our houses' lanyard. We decided to put a QR code on the back of our lanyards for an easy way for customers to reach our website. I, personally, had some trouble with the front of our lanyards and achieving equal proportions between our templates and the photos taken with the DSLR. Eventually we figured how to keep the proportion and quality with some transformations on Photoshop. Right now we are waiting to begin testing prints of the lanyard to make sure we complete them with the up most quality. Other than working on the lanyards, I am just about to complete my last safety test for CNC.
September 23-27: This week I worked on our house laser cut plaque for our house logo and name. It was my first time laser cutting on acrylic and surprisingly we did not immediately run into any major issues. The engraving went well on our first test and we began to plan for the final, a translucent outer, dark green with a dark or possibly light wood back ground put in place to accentuate the green logo and text. Beyond the plaque and planning, our house printed our first set of lanyards, which came out as a first draft is expected. They were a little shaky due to the sizing and lack of a working QR code. We are planning to create a more professional set with our teams shirts after we print them, but until then the current ones will suffice.
October 2-4: This week our group figured out how to vinyl heat press transfer onto t-shirts. We cut out vinyl with our house logo and name with the vinyl cutter and looked up some online tutorials and articles on how to heat press transfer vinyl. After some reading and a short video, we began to test some sizes of cuts and the heat transferring process. We single pressed the initial shirt to see how it would do after some washing and wear, we plan to double press another if the single is not durable enough. Besides our shirt progress, we our coming to the final completion of our house sigil's tests. We got the margins sorted out and plan to cut the final acrylic soon.
October 7-11: This week our house finished cutting out the first piece of our house plaque, which is cut on clear-forest green acrylic. We first ran into some issues with vectoring with the laser cutter at first, but re-cut the border and got the piece out with no damage. After that I began a very rough design of the first shirt we would like to produce and sell out of our own shop. It's themed around a beach and simplistic design, with some of my own photography. I hope to, in the future, create a more detailed approach to this same design as the quality of the photo of the shirt blank is pretty horrid.
October 14-18: This week our house finally completed our first order and are just waiting for the exchange of currency for our produced product. We finished up some lanyards for the political science club at Ventura College and are now just awaiting for him to pick them up. Besides that I have begun working on some other shirt designs and we are hoping to learn emulsion soon so we can produce some not only for our house, but also we would love to begin shipping them out in house from online purchase. With that we were hoping to expand our possible sales to further places.
October 21-25: This week I started up our first venture into social media with an Instagram account. I set it up as a business and starting following some people local to Ventura, but we do hope to branch out to some other areas in California, after the account gets a little larger. Everything is set up for contacting us and I will post some stuff soon to see if we can attract any consumers, so we can harvest some jobs. Other than that we began producing our sticker order for Mrs. Schmitt, so hopefully we will have another job done soon with some good profit.
November 4-8: This week we completed cutting out our stickers for Mrs. Schmitt and are planning to finish up the sale in the coming week. The stickers were using some detailed design and font, so they took a decent amount of time to weave and remove. The stickers ended up turning out pretty good and we are making good profit, so it was not a bad sale at all. We also recognized that the detailed approach to stickers may not always be the best option due to the time investment. Other than that we heat pressed vinyl onto another shirt and it came out pretty well. We are currently looking for a next job to be one that contains mostly shirts, as we would like to practice and master shirt designing and making.
November 11-15: This week we began to learn how to mass screen print shirts. We really wanted to hop onto this skill because we want to take jobs based around mass shirt production, as they seem to be a great way to make profit. Our first issues arose with learning how to flood the designs properly and after we got that we had to get some experience on pressing the designs. The first couple of prints we completed came out cracked after some pulling on the material, but eventually we got a design to stay well intact after some pull tests. In the coming weeks we hope to secure a big job surrounding screen printing as it would be a great profit and a great way to master the technique of printing.
November 18-22: During this week we mastered screen printing shirts and really got our craft down. We all practiced a lot and got pretty perfect at preventing the prints from cracking. When we get a job or order for shirts we are all going to be able to pitch in and complete the work at hand. As of Thursday we began brain storming and rough designs of our Soldier Project entry into the house joust. We are currently thinking about targeting Mrs. Schmitt, as we have worked with her before and we believe we can nail exactly what she wants in her awards. Other than that we are still looking outward for more jobs.
November 25 - December 6: During this period of time we began work and finished work on multiple different assignments and jobs. With some of our individual design inputs, Gavin started to design our soldier project awards. The designs are coming to a finish soon and we want to start making prototypes with acrylic and wood. Other than that we finally completed the manual labor portion of our job with Mrs. Schmitt by applying all the stickers to the Chrome Books. We again ran into trouble with the shape of the stickers as they refused to detach from the transfer paper and we had to instead pretty much weed them again onto the surface of the Chrome Books. We are now only seeking the payment from Mrs. Schmitt and then that job is completed.
December 9-13: This week our house got swamped with jobs and began the Soldier Project Trophies first mark ups done for Monday. I am leading on a job that I am doing for a friend with some vinyl printing on a blank shirt hes providing. Right now I am still finishing the design that I am working with him on, but after that I am going to get the conformation to began and hopefully finish up the job quickly and efficiently. Other than that, our house got two jobs from teachers. One from Captain for stickers and the other from the math department for engraving calculators. We are hoping to finish everything up before semester one ends.
December 16-20: This week I finalized the design with the buyer for the heat press vinyl designs on the shirt. I will order colors soon and finish up the computer design of the separate vinyl pieces on Inkscape and cut them on the vinyl cutter after ordered. Beyond that, we completed our sticker job with Captain and because of our experiences with the Schmitt sticker job, we knew how to properly design and apply them this time. I personal weeded the stickers and helped to apply them by cutting and placing them on the correct sized transfer paper. That job was by far are easiest and quickest, so I believe as a group we have finally gotten past the learning stage and are really becoming efficient.
January 6-10: This week Jacob and I finalized the designs for the shirt order on Adobe Illustrator and now we are just wanting for our heat transfer vinyl to be purchased and shipped. I finalized the color choices with the client and put in an order for a sky blue and lavender purple set of vinyl. Beyond the shirt job, as a house we have been working on finally finishing our house sigil. We got the dimensions sorted out for the back plate of the sigil and picked out the appropriate wood. In a last minute decision we also decided to put our names on the back plate. In the coming weeks we plan to complete three projects.
January 13-17: This week we finished our house sigil and ran into some immediate issues with securing the acrylic to the piece of wood we selected. The first screw we drilled into the acrylic cracked the corner, so we quickly learned to go a little further inland on the acrylic to prevent it from splitting. We continued screwing the corners on and by the end another had cracked, but luckily when we secured the sigil to the wall the crackers weren't noticeable. Besides that struggle, we cut the vinyl for the shirt order and now only need to double heat press it for it to be done, it will be finished before the semester.
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