I respect one of the most experienced software engineers on our project. He is very humble, attempting to divert recognition and point out the accomplishments of others. Despite his protestations, I believe he has saved our company a fair amount of money over the course of this project (I think he's been on this project for 5+ years now). So, I wanted to honor him with a desk sculpture. The whole team chipped in for the cost of the print. I am going to attempt to get this painted by Monday, since we're doing an important test event this week.

This piece is intended to be in the "steampunk" style - a sort of retro future where things are powered by steam and mechanical means, and the style is roughly Victorian / Industrial Revolution. The little plaque on the front says <his name> and "Chief Engineer". The strange machine one which he leans is meant to be an imitation of the sort of product my company produces, since I can't represent software itself tangibly.





The back reads "opere et veritates", which (hopefully) means "in action and in truth", signifying doing what is right in everyday actions. I meant it to double as a sort of "guild mark" and a comment on his work ethic.




UPS seems to have a comprehension problem. Fortunately, the contents were unharmed. I may send this image to them with a bit of a reprimand.


EDIT: Turns out I live in a dreamworld. UPS is the culprit, not FedEx.

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[Updated on: Wed, 25 April 2012 13:07 UTC]

@stop4stuff - Thanks. I couldn't even dream of attempting such an accent with any sort of dignity.

Here's an in-progress photo of painting. I decided to leave off the initial sealant, fearing to obscure the engraved designs. This means the paint tends to bleed, but it also creates interesting shading. Everything is also a bit desaturated. Anyway, still far from complete.

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Painting is complete. The nameplate received quite a few coats of paint before I was happy. I should have made the engraved designs deeper.

Overall, I'm happy. The subdued color scheme is to my taste and fits my coworker's humble personality. We'll see how he likes it tomorrow.

As an aside - every time I look at close-up photos of my models in WSF (which show more detail than I see with a casual glance), I realize how rough the material really is. Perhaps one day I will start to polish these as I have seen others do in this forum. Right now, I'm not sure I have the patience to do so with the sort of pieces I print.






By the way, I must explain myself somewhat. It may be silly, but I avoid posting folks' names where they would never have any contact or control. This is the reason that I have blacked out all or part of people's names whenever I post here. I hope this doesn't confuse anyone.

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