Tag Archives: brown

BioShock Big Daddy

Posted on by
bioshock-22x24

Bioshock Big Daddy, brown Sharpie on banner paper, 22″ tall by 24″ wide

This drawing of the “Big Daddy” cyborg from the video game BioShock was drawn by robot with a brown Sharpie on banner paper, 22″ tall by 24″ wide.  The dimensions refer to the drawing, not the sheet of paper.  The drawing took about four hours to complete.

Although I never played System Shock or BioShock, I appreciated the artwork and badass robots that appeared in the game.  I had a feeling others would enjoy it to, and I’m glad to report I was right.  There were a lot of people who instantly recognized the drawing long before it was complete.  I chose the brown because the original robot was a dull oxidized bronze color in the video game.  The drawing was converted from a bitmap image to scalable vector graphic using the same process as with the Iron Man drawing – separating the drawing into several colors, each in their own layer, and then having the robot draw the outline of each layer rather than shading them.  Shading the layers of the drawing would have taken a lot longer and possibly been messier.  Unlike the Iron Man drawing, the robot managed to draw each layer pretty much perfectly.

Of the various complex drawings created at Maker Faire 2014, this one probably came out the best overall.

Serenity Firefly class ship and quote

Posted on by
serenity-15x28

Serenity, Firefly class ship, brown Sharpie on banner paper, 15″ tall by 28″ wide

This drawing was created at Maker Faire Bay Area 2014.  This is a drawing of the Firefly class star ship “Serenity” from the television show “Firefly,” drawn in brown Sharpie on banner paper, 15″ tall by 28″ wide.  The dimensions refer to the drawing, not the sheet of paper.  This drawing took about an hour and a half to complete.

While this was probably the simplest and quickest of all of the drawings from that weekend, it is probably my favorite.  In honor of the ill-fated Browncoats, I chose a brown Sharpie for the drawing.  I had to fiddle mightily with Inkscape’s Trace Bitmap settings to turn the speckley drawing of the leaf, quote, and cutout of Serenity into a black and white picture.  As I worked to transform the drawing into a scalable vector graphic, I had to repair several of the letters to remain legible.

You may notice the misaligned “f” in “leaf” in the drawing.  This misalignment doesn’t appear in the SVG file, but did appear in the Polargraph control software I used to create the file to be drawn.  At first I was going to re-align the letter – then I decided I liked the chaotic implication of this one misplaced character.  To me it suggests the disarray surrounding the moments in the film when the quote was uttered, as well as the sudden but inevitable Wheedon-esque betrayal that followed.

This was one of final drawings of Maker Faire 2014.