Today the Shapeways designer spotlight focuses on 3D magician Lincoln Kamm, we take a peek behind the curtain to see what makes this designer, performer, photographer and artist tick... If you are in LA you can also get to know Lincoln a little better at the first Shapeways LA Meetup on Saturday March 3rd 2012 at Marmalade Cafe, 4783 Commons Way Suite E Calabasas, Los Angeles, CA 91302.

Full name:     Lincoln Kamm

Location:    Los Angeles California

Alias:   LincolnK

3D software of choice:   Blender and Zbrush

Links : Craftosterone.com

http://www.etsy.com/shop/Craftosterone

https://www.facebook.com/Craftosterone

LincolnWorld.com

facebook.com/LincolnWorldWatchers

Novakingway.com

How did you learn how to design in 3D?

I taught myself how to use a 3D package (Turbo Silver) on the Amiga in 1989 while going to school (California Institute of the Arts) and studying character animation.  Then I worked for 12 years in the animation industry on video games, movies, TV shows, and theme parks.

How would you describe your creative process?

When doing jewelry, sculpture, and other art work, I tend to start with an idea or an emotion and then sketch out loose ideas. From there I sometimes do one or more tighter illustrations, then I move to a CG package.  For the more functional devices I usually go straight from loose sketch to CG.

Shapeways is part of Print/3D an Exhibit of Works of Additive Manufacturing (AM) from Industrial Design to Architecture at Material ConneXion in New York City.

Designs from the Shapeways community included Gilbert13, Nervous System, Sevensheaven, Continuum Fashion, Theo Jansen, Stony Smith, David Krentz Dinosaurs, Kaetemi, Bathsheeba Grossman, Bits to Atoms, Kevin Wei, Kurt Van den Branden, Anders Hansen, Tristan Bethe and MineToys alongside 3D models from MakerBot, MGX, Bespoke and more.

Print/3D runs at Material ConneXion, 60 Madison Avenue, 2nd floor, New York, NY from February 28th to May 11th, 2012.  

When Shapeways announced they were offering model builds in glazed ceramic, they caught the attention of Chicago-based designers Jerry O'Leary and Joe Graceffa.

The duo decided to give themselves a challenge: conceptualize, design, model, and upload an idea within a single night. 

Five hours later, an "Homage to the Nugget" was born. Of course, you can't just throw out a phrase like "Homage to the Nugget" without answering a few questions.  

Q: What kind of nugget are we talking about? 

A: That would be the humble chicken nugget. 

Q: Why would anyone create an homage to a chicken nugget? 

A: The nugget suffers from its associations with convenience, affordability, and mass production. For most adults, its pleasures are of the guilty sort. 

The pair wondered if they could design a way to alter these perceptions without getting too serious about it. What about ceramic nuggets? They liked the idea, but realized that a nugget that cracks your teeth isn't much good. 

A big breakthrough came when the designers learned that there are only four shapes of nuggets, and that some people refer to these shapes by the states that they most closely resemble: Georgia, Louisiana, Illinois, and Arkansas. Jerry and Joe were intrigued. There was something about the distance between the historic, stately names (no pun intended) and the humble nugget. They decided to see if they could bridge this gap by serving "exquisite" nuggets. They really liked the idea of serving domes--those fine-dining ones everyone has seen on TV but few have had the pleasure of actually experiencing. 

What else? Nuggets were bought. Over the course of one night, Joe and Jerry sketched, modeled, and uploaded their work. The final result is their attempt to bring emotion and drama the experience of a humble food. 

Take a look at their work in their Shapeways store - Depressed Unicorn

Shapeways <3's Unicorns

Want to meet other designers, makers, hackers, jewelers, artists, engineers, architects, coders, animators, humans interested in making their ideas real with 3D printing then join us Tuesday the 28th of February at the Mason Jar in NYC for our February 3D Printing Meetup.

Bring along your 3D prints for an informal show and tell, we will have a range of items in different materials and we may even have Bryan Vaccaro bringing along a Kinect to demonstrate realtime 3d scanning with ReconstructMe. 

Tuesday, February 28, 2012, 7:00 PM

Mason Jar

43 East 30th Street
Bet. Park & Madison

New York, NY (map)

RSVP via Meetup 

Making your designs possible in the widest range of the high quality 3D printed materials is one of our main focuses at Shapeways and today we are super excited to offer Black Glazed Ceramics to our range of material options for the next two months.

Black Glazed Ceramics joins White Ceramics as our second food-safe material it suitable for cups, plates, bowls, sake sets, almost anything.  

The process used to create Black Glazed Ceramics is the same as White Ceramics with the same design rules, level of detail, wall thickness requirements and size restrictions.

We have printed a few models from the Shapeways community so you can see how the finish looks over a variety of surface geometries.

Octo Cup, by Cunicode, current available for sale in Black Glazed Ceramics

Dublin based design studio and Shapeways community members Curve Creative have been getting some great exposure for the Nanolet Bracelet, Cpt. Jack and are sure to get more love for their Headbuddy. Paget, Alan and Ben were kind enough to give us a peek into the minds behind their 3D printed designs.

How did you learn to design in 3D:

We all studied Industrial Design in the National College of Art and Design in Ireland. 3D modeling is a fundamental part of the course to help communicate ideas and to ready products for manufacture.

How would you describe your creative process?

Specialising in functional products is a big part of Curve and for every creative process we start by identifying problems or areas where there are opportunities to design something new. We will brainstorm creative solutions and aim to execute the final solution in a way that is both functional and looks great. One of our key goals is to always make things simpler. A question most commonly asked by ourselves when reviewing a design is how can we make it simpler.

What do you do when you're not designing? 

Design is a constant activity, it’s always in the back of our minds. Ideas just grow, and sometimes we might be inspired by a little nugget in everyday life. For this reason we are constantly ‘switched on’ but when we want to clear our minds, sports is a good place to start, running, rugby and climbing. 

In theory, of course there are material restrictions but any physical object can be described using Fubini’s Theorem and can therefore be 3D printed. My handsome Aussie friend over at 3D Printing is the Future consulted Professor Alan Branford of Flinders University to get the lowdown.

"He said that Fubini’s Theorem states that an object of n dimensions can be represented as a spectrum of layers of shapes of (n-1)-dimensional  layers.

This means that a 3 dimensional shape (any shape in the real world) can be represented as layers of 2 dimensional shapes."

There are of course also mathematical objects that can ONLY be produced using 3D printing, or as we like to say here at Shapeways, making the impossible possible

or

Shapeways = (impossible - im) x ^∞

3D printing is featured at a newsstand near you thanks to Roger Yu of USA Today.  In the feature More design hobbyists, entrepreneurs use 3-D printing a brief overview is given about the current state of 3D printing with mention of Shapeways community member Jeff Bare alongside other 'consumer facing' 3D printers.

"Entrepreneurs with limited resources, such as designer Jeff Bare, are increasingly using online service companies such as Shapeways, which prints uploaded designs and lets members open virtual stores on the site where they pay a fee for each item they sell.

Bare, a furniture designer by day, began designing a cover for the iPad three months before it was introduced in April 2010. With an estimate of iPad dimensions, he printed a prototype. After making adjustments, he was ready to sell his covers when iPad was launched. The first cover, made of polyimide (nylon-based plastic), sold a month later for $30.

Bare is one of 120,000 users of Shapeways, based in New York. Shapeways printed 750,000 products last year, ranging from jewelry (a popular category) to phone accessories. "In China, you have to order thousands. (Here), you can order one or two," says Shapeways CEO Peter Weijmarshausen. "The risk of doing business goes down to absolutely zero."

Awwwwwwwwwwww.

Thanks and congratulations to Tasmin Harcourt whose 5 year old daughter designed her a necklace for her birthday and then had it 3D printed in Sterling Silver by Shapeways.