This has been a real challenge!
For an advertisement campaign, I was asked to design and create 3 robots that had to be desperate because they will never be able to play Jazz.
Jazz is a human thing!
The challenge was the timing and the results expected which both had to be respected.
- 25 days in total.
- Fully articulated robots, no motor.
- 3 different designs.
- They had to look like real robots, with wires components, shiny covers…
- The facial expressions had to be minimalist(none)
- The expression of desperation had to come from the body gestures.
Designing, 3D printing, assembling and painting of these respectively 1.60m, 160m and 1.20m robots was done in 25 days.
I barely had nights to sleep, working alone in my work shop, I thought I wouldn’t be able to accomplish the task in time.
The surface finishing with car filler and primer on all the 3D printed parts took me a long time to get a perfect smooth finish for the paint job.
All articulations are created with 3D printed ball joint design that can give the robot any human position, the ball joint I designed is scalable and allows to tight screw them to keep the desired position. All the metal parts you see are ABS 3D printed and painted with special metal paint using silver coating to get the shiny aluminium effect.
These robots were not motorised, but had to look like they were built by a real Robot Company (like Boston Dynamics or Honda) and were supposed to look very sad although the face wasn’t supposed to reflect emotions. Therefore the emotions had to be perceived through body gestures.
You can see how I designed the shoulders that lay low to reflect sadness, the stomach can bent in two half, also to reflect disapointment as well.
The pictures in black and white were shot Vincent Dixon, a famous photographer, which used only argentic films and NO digital touching. (no photoshop) The robot by the piano was shoot on New York location for more realistic effect( seriously true although it could have been done in any Paris studio)
Anyway these 3 robots have been on billboards advertisements in the Parisian subway this last week and also in many magazines and newspapers.
If you come to see us at the Paris Makerfaire in June, these robots will certainely be on our booth.