I love this!

Hi there, long time no see! I'd like to ask how you're doing, but since I doubt I'd get a response I'll just start talking on my own again ;). Once again about my design work, since that is basically all I'm doing at the moment. A little boring to the naked eye, but all the more interesting for me ;). I love creating! Love it!

It is a relief to be able to say that, after working on my designs for, well, forever it seems. It's just several months though in real time though. Since about March I started to work on them 'for real', dedicating several days a week to learning the 3D software, brainstorming, more brainstorming, sketching, and trying my hands at creating models for 3D printing. My whole business plan is based on that, you see. Creating actual, physical, usable products to be 3D printed, instead of just the ones in my head. Sellable products instead of imaginary ones. To earn a bit of extra income in the future that would allow me to spend more time on designing. And so on, until I would be able to work on my own products full time, making the transition to mass produced items.

All this time, a thought, hastily pushed away, kept creeping up. What if this turned out to not be what I loved? What if creating physical products on my own was not what kept my heart beating and my blood flowing? Then what?

For years, I've known that I wanted to work independently as a product designer, and later on in my own design studio. It would take a lot of work and would be a mighty difficult road, I've always known, but I felt that it was just as well the only scenario that I really really wanted.

And now, with my first batch of personally designed products in the shop, my second batch of products arrived just today, and my third batch almost finished (hopefully next week), I think it is safe. Safe to say: I love this! Such a relief ;). Because loving what you do is so incredibly important, especially when planning to walk the difficult road. So yeah, I frickin' love this! Whew!

I'm even considering starting a two-year Master course Industrial Design at Delft University (two hour away from my home to boot), because I'm starting to doubt my current (Bachelor) level of knowledge and skill will be enough to deal with mass-production and more complex commercial designs. Yeah, me, who used to say: "never again" after finishing my Bachelor's. That's how much I love this, and how confident I've become about this suiting me. It would require a rather insane schedule since I would want to continue what I'm doing now as well, and I would still need to brush up my skills and knowledge on several fields since it is another University, where the Bachelor education has a different focus than the one I did. But I would start it only after a year anyway, so I'll have some time for that.

Okay, I'll stop ranting now...


Basically everything else I did apart from work lately were exercises and challenges to improve my skills on several fields. Yes, I'm obsessed, I know ;).

I'm nearing the end of my "14 days, 1 shape a day" challenge. It was to train my 3D software modelling skills. Just using taking 15 to 60 minutes a day to create an aesthetically pleasing shape. Creating a good render (virtually created image) of it was originally part of the challenge because it seemed a good opportunity to learn that as well, but I've mysteriously managed to make my virtual camera disappear and have yet to find it back.

For non-3D-software-experts: the camera is an object in the 3D model from which point the virtual item would be 'photographed', but no camera means no point to photograph from and thus no digital image. There you see kids, always remember where you leave your stuff! (Yes, that was a lame joke, sorry for that).

These are the results of day 1 to 4, in screenshots, still awaiting the missing camera.

I also figured learning to create interesting product pictures would be convenient. And fun. So I'm trying to create more interesting settings when photographing by adding props etc. Haven't gotten very far though. The score so far (including the picture on top of this post):

I've gotten a bit farther with my embroidery.

A quick drawing I made while half asleep, it turned out better than expected. I should try that more often, drawing without thinking about everything. Less thinking about doing, more doing. It's just like life, really.

And another drawing. Sigh, drawing fabric is hard...

I'll post the pictures of my second batch of products soon!