Tell us a little bit about yourself: Who are you? Where are you located?

I am an artist, author,  designer and yoga teacher, working at the intersections between art science and technology. These practices, often considered divergent, find a common denominator in thinking of ourselves as a part of a system. For instance a yoga posture is about our body defining a geometric form changing in time and relating to space; human movement can also be thought of as a design solution.  I have been living in New York for over two decades but I was born and grew up in Rome. Living in a city where you breathe geometry in every building and street, probably had a major influence in my work.

I started working with 3D design in architecture, as my formal degree is a masters in architecture. I have been working with 3D modeling for over twenty years using several different softwares, from AutoCAD to 3dMax, often writing scripts to customize built-in functionality. More recently I have been using Bentley GenerativeComponents, a parametric associative software, where C# scripts can be used to build geometric elements as well as a sequence of transformative operations. I find GC the best design tool so far for its flexibility; the change of parameters allows me to design wearable objects of different sizes and materials specifications using the same set of operations. 

What brought you to 3D printing with Shapeways?

Who are your favorite designers or artists?

Leonardo, Filippo Borromini, Marcel Duchamp, Buckminster Fuller, Philip Stark and Kraftwerk. On Shapeways, I like Bathesba's work a lot.

If you weren't limited by current technologies, what would you want to make using 3D printing?

Hi my name is Justin Howlett, I am 24 years old and I have lived in London for about a year. I studied animation at Bournemouth University where I used my computer model making skills to make 3D sets and props for animation productions that we would put on as students. After leaving university and now working as a freelancer I continue to develop my practice.

I've been working on my ring project for the last few months. Much like the steampunk aesthetic, I really like to imagine my rings as something someone from the future might wear or something you might find that was once lost in the ground centuries ago. I have always been interested in ancient Egypt and especially the pyramids and I often have this in mind when I start a design. I like to use triangles or other simple forms as a starting point for the shapes in my designs. Sometimes me and my girlfriend Jess brainstorm ideas together which can lead to interesting results! 

When I was 12 I bought a game and it came with an editor which lets you create maps for the game. Later on taught myself to use 3D modeling programs like Maya and 3D Max.

I have recently used Pinterest and Twitter to get more exposure for my shop. My website is where I keep my portfolio of work and a link to my Shapeways shop, but I am new to this and I'm still figuring out the best way to do it.

What's the story behind your designs? What drew you to making miniatures? 

In 2008, my wife suggested that I (again) take up model railroading.  I started working on a train layout, but quickly found that there were items (especially houses) that I wanted, but weren't available for purchase. Even though I can do a few artistic things, my very early background was in architecture and mechanical drawing, so I tend to work with real or technical objects more than fanciful organic creations. My normal workflow involves in designing the object in decimal feet using 1:1 dimensions as often as possible.  If the real object is 40 feet long, I design my object to be 40 units long. Then, I have the freedom to re-scale the items to match whatever train scale I happen to be working for, which then makes it easier to offer multiple sizes.

How did you learn how to design in 3D?

My first semester in college, rather than work on homework, I attempted to construct what you would call today a voxel-based model of the Star Trek Enterprise. If you can imagine, it wasn?t a great success using 80 column punch cards, but I did get it to the point where I could do 2D prints of the ship from any random rotation angle.  In the 80's, I played with Pov-Ray and week long scene rendering.  Then, in the 90's, out came Truespace, which allowed you to build VRML worlds you could walk around in, which has always been my true goal: a virtual world you could walk around in, like Stark Trek's Holodeck.  I've used Truespace since version 0.9, and I am really saddened that Microsoft bought it and killed off new development. I really should try Blender, but that's for another day.

What brought you to 3D printing with Shapeways?

Anything else you want to share

It is almost impossible to describe how fulfilling it is to design something on the computer and then hold a copy of it in my hand: it's truly a life-long dream. Beyond that, it brings me to a profound sense of accomplishment when someone shows me a painted and finished version of my items sitting on their train layout. Understand: Stony Can't Paint, and when someone takes one of my models and finishes it up properly, it's overwhelming.