Doctor Who “To Victory” Dalek Poster

Doctor Who "To Victory" Dalek poster, red Sharpie on banner paper, 28" tall x 23" wide

Doctor Who “To Victory” Dalek poster, red Sharpie on banner paper, 28″ tall x 23″ wide

Another robot drawing from exhibiting at Maker Faire Bay Area 2013.  This is the result of my PlotterBot drawing a cropped version of the “To Victory” Dalek poster on the BBC website which was released with the “Victory of the Daleks” episode from 2010.  ((Those faithful readers of my blog posts may recall my other attempt to memorialize this same drawing))  This drawing is red Sharpie on banner paper, 28″ tall x 23″ wide.  The dimensions refer to the drawing, not the sheet of paper.  This drawing took about eight hours.

Unfortunately, this drawing was longer than the sheet of paper I had allocated for it.  You can see at the bottom of the drawing a white uncolored patch where the blue tape was covering the edge of the paper.  However, if you can get over that defect, this is still a cool poster – and the biggest drawing I had ever done up to that point.

Since this drawing was posted on the fence at Maker Faire 2013, rolled up, archived, unrolled, transported to Maker Faire 2014 where it was displayed again, you can see a little wrinkling of the paper at the edges.  As you can also see, the drawing went off the edge of the paper.

Game of Thrones House Stark Dire Wolf

housestark-20x28

Game of Thrones House Stark Dire Wolf, red Sharpie on banner paper, 20″ tall x 28″ wide

This is one of my robot drawings from exhibiting at Maker Faire Bay Area 2013.  It is a robotic interpretation of the excellent “metallic Game of Thrones wallpaper” by Sasha Vinogradova.  This drawing is red Sharpie on banner paper, 20″ tall x 28″ wide.  The dimensions refer to the drawing, not the sheet of paper.  This drawing took about five hours.

I don’t remember why I chose red for this drawing, but this is another instance where I particularly like the effect of a large “blood red” mark at the end of the drawing.  I feel like it balances the negative space and leave a slight ominous tone. This is another wide drawing, though a little off center.  If I were to do this drawing over again, I would probably make it smaller.

Since this drawing was posted on the fence at Maker Faire 2013, rolled up, archived, unrolled, transported to Maker Faire 2014 where it was displayed again, you can see a little wrinkling of the paper at the edges.

Breaking Bad’s Walter White

Breaking Bad's Walter White, blue Sharpie on banner paper, 14" tall x 29" wide

Breaking Bad’s Walter White, blue Sharpie on banner paper, 14″ tall x 29″ wide

This is one of my drawings from exhibiting at Maker Faire Bay Area 2013.  It features Breaking Bad’s Walter White sitting in a warehouse surrounded by bricks of cash.  The drawing is blue Sharpie on banner paper, 14″ tall x 29″ wide.  The drawing took about five hours to complete, because of all of the dark areas.

I chose the blue Sharpie for this drawing to echo the series’ famous “blue meth.”  I think it would have looked equally good in green1 or yellow.2  This one of my wider drawings – very nearly to the edge of each side of the sheet of paper, which is fairly difficult to do.  Since this drawing was started at the top left corner3 I couldn’t have been positive it would have finished within the left edge of the paper.  You can also see a dark spot at the bottom left where the pen soaked into the drawing for a bit before I picked up the pen.  Depending upon the drawing, I actually like this effect.

Since this drawing was posted on the fence at Maker Faire 2013, rolled up, archived, unrolled, transported to Maker Faire 2014 where it was displayed again, you can see a little wrinkling of the paper at the edges.

  1. Greed, envy, cash []
  2. To call out the yellow hazard suit []
  3. You can see how the drawing is darker at the top right, lighter at the bottom left []

New PlotterBot Drawing – Calvin & Hobbes on a wagon

PlotterBot drawn Calvin & Hobbes on a wagon

PlotterBot drawn Calvin & Hobbes on a wagon

The other I came home from work and decided I just had to draw something.1 I decided on the above picture of Calvin & Hobbes and set the robot to work.  The drawing is big – about 29″ tall and 28″ wide.

While my tallest drawing remains the Yoda, this is definitely the widest drawing I’ve managed thus far.  I’m also pleased with my rather simplistic method of centering the robot.2 If the centering were off, the remainder of the drawing would be skewed.  And, as you can see from the horizontal lines, there isn’t any observable skewing.

There are some very mild artifacts in the drawing – spots where the pen wasn’t lifted far enough off the paper, some areas where you can see how the pen lifted up and down, and places where the shading/hatching doesn’t exactly line up perfectly with the outline of the drawing.  Even with these minor issues, I’m really happy with the drawing.

  1. I feel like when I don’t “make” something for a little while I get kinda twitchy. []
  2. I’ll be adding a tutorial for this later – it’s a lot simpler than you might think… []

PlotterBot in action – drawing Calvin & Hobbes

PlotterBot drawn Calvin & Hobbes

PlotterBot drawn Calvin & Hobbes

It must be that school is almost out and summer is in the air – because I started thinking back to my favorite comic strip of all time – Calvin & Hobbes.  I made the above drawing by taking a picture of a small 1″ x 1″ comic and “tracing” it into a vector graphic in Inkscape.1 Once I had an outline I was happy with, I used the EggBot extension for Inkscape from EMSL to add a hatching “shading” design to the drawing.  If I had made the hatching close together or used a wider tipped pen, this could have been a lot darker.  However, I really like the way it turned out.

The final drawing is about 19″ tall and 24″ wide.

Since this drawing took about two hours, I took pictures at intervals from my digital camera on a tripod.  I compiled them together into an animated GIF, below.  (Please let me know if you can’t see it)

Draw PlotterBot!  Draw like the wind!

Draw PlotterBot! Draw like the wind!

The result is a two hour drawing completed in just under two seconds.  Nice, eh?

Also, if you need your Calvin & Hobbes fix, this website is running the old comics one day at a time.

  1. A tutorial is forthcoming… []

PlotterBot Drawn Illuminated Text

Post-Modern Illuminated Text

Post-Modern Illuminated Text

This morning I designed a surprise for my daughter.  It is an illuminated text version of the first page of a hypothetical storybook all about her.  The big smudge in the center is where I blocked out her name.  🙂  The drawing is roughly 20-inches wide and 28-inches tall. The drawing took more than 8-hours and was my first concerted attempt to draw something using servo powered pen lifts.

It reads:

Chapter One

ONCE upon a time … a long, long time ago in land far, far away there lived a very clever little girl named [_____] who had a very rare and special talent.

She was … a tinkerer.

The PlotterBot started drawing at about 2pm today and finished a little after 10pm.  By the time she went to bed, the robot had only completed the border.  I can’t wait to give it to her!

I designed the picture in Inkscape using a vector graphic of a cool border, a knight fighting a dragon, a combination of several fonts, and some touches of my own.  Once done I had to do a small amount of fiddling with Inkscape to make the file more “draw-able,” a process I will document in the next few days.