This weeks Designer Spotlight focuses on Jamie Spinello, whose creations in Stainless Steel captured our imagination.

I am Jamie Spinello, a designer and artist currently living in Austin, Texas. I have a shop here at Shapeways called Cactusbones, where I sell my 3D prints.  As a designer I have been making almost all of my designs by hand, so 3D printing is a relatively new venture for me and has opened up a new world of possibilities. 

What's the story behind your designs? What inspires you? 

I am inspired by similarities between our ancient past and the modern world, as well as the similarities between plant and animal anatomies. I love making designs that teeter on visual boundaries. Making designs that are loaded with symbolic meaning that hopefully can be transfered to and empower the wearer is important to me. In addition, some of my general inspirations are fossils, insects, astronomy, astrology, alchemy and mystical stories. 

What brought you to 3D printing with Shapeways?

Stainless Steel. As soon as I saw that Shapeways was offering prints in stainless steel I spent a weekend coming up with my first design and got it printed. I had been creeping on Shapeways since 2010 watching all the magic others were making and finally decided in 2012 to start making models myself.

How did you learn how to design in 3D?

I am still in the infantile stages with my knowledge of 3D design, but I have taught myself through watching YouTube tutorials and exploring the programs for hours trying to see how everything works. I try to integrate my working knowledge of other 2D graphic programs with programs like SketchUp to create my designs. I find the forums here very helpful and love that there is a community to turn to when I have questions. 

How do you promote your work?

I have a shop over at etsy as well as a Facebook page where I share my new designs both handmade and printed. My Facebook page is my alternative to a mailing list and it allows me to share my process and studio practices with others. My drawings, paintings and sculptural work are on my website.

Who are your favorite designers or artists?

Lee Bontecou, Greg Lynn, Frank Lloyd Wright and Theo Jansen.

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

I would love to be able to buy 3D prints composed of solid copper, bronze, and brass as base metal materials lend themselves to more post production adaptations and integrations through sawing, soldering and forging. I would also love to be able to print sculptures on a large scale rather than being limited to smaller scale projects. 

But her request got me thinking. I have almost three decades of modeling experience (building tanks, aircraft, ships, and dioramas) as well as miniature painting experience, strictly as a hobby. And over the last eight years or so, that skill set developed further when I renovated our house. In particular I developed extensive wood working skills. And since my daughter's birth I have also dabbled in making toys for her. So it occurred to me that I might be able to actually design and build a Nautilus from scratch. That is what I decided to do.

After telling my daughter that I intended to build the Nautilus for her as her birthday present I got to work. Without going into detail here about all the various stages of the project and the endless challenges I faced - the challenges were many and multifaceted, and would easily require thirty pages to lay out - I brought the Nautilus to its first stage of conclusion on 17 December 2012, after six months and more than 500 hours of work. I gave up counting the actual monetary cost at a certain point since doing so was causing me, mentally, to avoid working on the project. I am sure the current cost - excluding all labor - is over $3000.00, but I would not be surprised if it were a lot more than that by the time it is finished. The second stage of work, in which I am currently involved, is the further decoration/renovation of the ship, which I fully expect will drastically change the look and feel of the dollhouse for the better. I see this stage as lasting another two years.

With respect to Glenn and 3D objects, the story is quite interesting. One of the first design challenges I had in building the Nautilus was what to do about the iconographic Bullaugen (large portholes) in the salon of the ship, the diving ring and the diving helmets. With regard to the former, at first I tried to find large size O rings from a variety of machine manufactures to serve as the Bullaugen, but I was unable to find anything suitable, since the size, the type of material and weight were factors: I needed something that was 6-8" in diameter, light weight (so that it could be mounted and would not put too much stress on either the bonds holding it, or the deck of the ship under it), and capable of being decorated. But during my failed search for O rings, I came upon a site, Custommade.com, that introduced people working on projects to people that could help them with those projects. It was here that I met Glenn, who is also an active Shapeways community member.

I owe Glenn a great debt of thanks for his kind generosity, beautiful work and patience. Glenn agreed to design the two Bullaguen, which we would then send to Shapeways to be printed in 3D. He also agreed to design the diving ring in the dive room, and the helmets for the crew. With respect to these latter two projects, I decided in favor of 3d printing because there was simply no other objects that could be suitably modified or pressed into service that would provide the proper look and feel. No one is making dollhouse scale (1/12 scale) diving helmets, as you can imagine ("Tea anyone in the parlor? Don't forget your certified to 1000 feet brass and copper diving helm!") I did find, at one point, keychains with brass diving helm decorations, but the helms were too small for the dolls' heads, and I wanted the dolls to be able to "get dressed" for diving and going through the diving ring.

For the 3D projects to work, I had to go through the film multiple times taking photos of the objects from various angles. Glenn then worked up the initial take and we went back and forth discussing the design as it developed. This process worked very smoothly with respect to the two Bullaugen and the diving ring. And I had to be very prudent in this process due to cost, since the objects themselves were not inexpensive to manufacture and Glenn had his costs for design.

Things almost came to a screeching halt, however, in the design and manufacturing of the helmets. Here we had a variety of issues that caused us many problems and drove the unit cost far beyond what either of us had envisioned. To make a long story short, in creating the helmets we experienced design snafus (things crept into the design that neither of us actually visually caught), miscommunication (especially visualizing differing measurements and proportions), and uncertainty (how would things really fit and look on one of the dolls). The result was that the first 3D helm we printed was expensive and unusable. It was, in fact, three times too large for the dolls, and would not fit through the diving ring. The second attempt at the same helm was stopped in production by Shapeways because of unworkable geometry (a sincere and heartfelt "thank you" to the team! Ed note: You're welcome!), and had to be redesigned again. Only the third time did we finally get a product that we could use, and, by then, costs had exceeded the budget by a wide margin. Even then I had to modify Captain Nemo to be able to wear the helmet, though for the rest of the crew the helmet was a perfect fit. As a consequence of the costs I am still buying helmets one at a time!

The ship itself is entirely handmade, handpainted and hand decorated by myself. So, for example, there are somewhere between 3000 and 4000 brass 1/8" brads in the ship serving as "rivets," all of which were put in by me by hand, and which constituted THE most repulsive decorating project in the Nautilus by a wide margin. The contents of the ship are either handmade by myself or handmade by someone else, and sometimes they are joinly made. For example, the bookshelves in the ship are partly made by me out of teakwood. I then enlisted a coppersmith I found on etsy and had him manufacture the copper "spirals" that mimic the style of the shelves in the movie. After receiving those, I glued the teak shelves together, stained them by hand, glued on the copper spirals and sprayed the entire shelving with lacquer. These were installed into one bedroom and the salon.

The map cabinet in the Navigation room, as yet another example, was made entirely my myself out of mahogany that I carefully cut, shaped, drilled, stained and painted. I then bought 7mm copper o rings and glued them onto the front of each map hole in the cabient. Finally, I manufactured fifteen sea charts for it. The strange clocklike mechanisms in the Nautilus are also made by myself by hand - they were a huge and physically painful project (bending copper on a micro scale bites into the fingertips terribly). But most of the furniture and some decoration pieces are made either by individual craftspersons (books, looking glass, porcelain, rugs by L DeLaney and evminatures, to name but two of my favorites), or high end dollhouse miniature companies (especially Bespaq, and Reutters porcelain).

So here we are. They Nautilus is now in phase two, decoration and renovation. I am adding additional shelving, rugs, furniture, curiosities, books, maps, fishing nets and more over the next two years. The bottom level of the Nautilus will come in for special attention in terms of its redecoration. In my view it much be much more spectacular, given how difficult it is to see. There will be hidden treasure (ballast, as Nemo tells Ned Land), an entirely redesigned and decorated kitchen and more. And more 3D helmets are coming as well; I eventually want to have four or five for the entire crew!

What an incredible project! Congratulations Alexander, and I'm sure your daughter feels like the luckiest girl in the world!

New York based fashion designer Kimberly Ovitz took the idea of natural defense, an exoskeleton, and brought it to Shapeways, the world’s leading 3D Printing marketplace and community. Together, we pioneered a fluid, organic jewelry collection that molds to your body like armor. During New York Fashion Week, Kimberly Ovitz presented her first jewelry line that you can buy straight from the Fall 2013 runway, custom made for you. The future of fashion is now.

What's the story behind this particular line? Where did you draw inspiration from? 

I studied animals and insects with natural defense mechanisms and found inspiration in the intricacies of their innate built-in protection systems. 

What brought you to 3D printing with Shapeways?

My team and I are very interested in technology. We read a lot about it and found out about Shapeways through some research.

How has thinking in this new medium changed the way that you approach design?

It has granted us the ability to do things we couldn’t do before because of timing  or volume.  3D printing has no limits which is amazing for small designers that do not have a large volume of orders yet.

How do you see 3D Printing being incorporated into your work in the future?

I hope in as many ways as possible! The possibilities are endless and I hope to continue a great partnership with Shapeways.

How do you see fans impacting your designs?

That is the coolest thing about Shapeways and 3D printing. The fact that it is so democratic and that the public can have input on the designs. I think it is important to listen to and hear the consumer and 3D printing makes it easier to produce objects that do that.

Who are your favorite designers or artists?

I’m very much inspired by minimal artists such as Sol Lewit and Cy Twombly however I appreciate photography the most artists such as Taryn Simon who not only take beautiful photos but also are educational and provocative at the same time.

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

I'd 3D print a whole house!

Shop the runway now on the Kimberly Ovitz Shapeways shop or see her beautiful collection on her website.

Okay, it's weekend - time for some fun! (And if you happen to be on the East Coast of the USA, some possibly snowed-in fun!)

Curiosity spotted an interesting looking piece of metal on Mars. What is it? 

We'd like YOU to tell us. You have until Monday morning 10:00, GMT+1 to come up with the answer. 

3D model the Martian Mystery, upload it to your gallery, tag it with 'Weekend Contest: Mars' and post the link and picture on our forum here.

You decide! Visit the model that you like most, and add it to your favorites. The model with the most votes wins.

Eternal fame! Kudos from the Shapeways team! Riches! Okay, well, the winner will get a $25 gift certificate. 

That's all? Yep, grab a drink, goof around in your favorite modeling app this weekend and have fun!

Bart

PS: Curiosity's Twitter feed is awesome.