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Gavin Flanagan

BA [Hons] 3D Design Modelmaking + Digital Art

From an early age, I always loved making. Using anything I could get my hands on to create fun, silly toys to play with. That, combined with my love for film and TV and the sci-fi and fantasy worlds found in them, only made sense that I would end up in modelmaking. My time in IADT taught me so much about the industry as well increased my skills to levels I didn't know I was cable of. Now I am looking forward to moving on to the workforce and continue to improve and learn new skills.

I made the alien skull in Zbrush by modifying a human skull. Once I was happy with that, I brought the file to fusion 360. There I hollowed out the skull and created all of the individual moving pieces that would fit inside the skull and work in unison to animate the alien

A solid version of the alien core was 3d printed and assembled on a base to then be sculpted over as well; the skull would also be used later to cast over to create the alien skin. It is also covered in small balls; these are small sockets I developed to keep the silicone skin in place

Multiple smaller test sculpts were done before the final sculpt to figure out the final character's look better. Basing the character off of a grey alien but adding Features like the nose inspired by different types of snakes and various reptiles .

once I was happy with the sculpt, I made a two-part fiberglass mold, cleaned down the 3d printed core, and cast it in eco flex silicone because it gives more stretch to the skin

I had to make custom eyes because a piece that I designed to fit inside the eye would connect to the rods to push and pull the eyes to look around . They were made on fusion 360, the full eye and the eye with a gap of the pupil and iris. They were then molded and cast in resin with a nut embedded once painted; they were then cast again in a clear coat and polished

while working on the eyes and teeth and sculpting, I was also printing all of the pieces for the final animatronics to get be assembled and tested

with the animatronics assembled, an MDF base was made with a small Led screen to show heart rate and monitor other vitals with the idea that the base is keeping the head alive as well tubes connected to the base as well the head with lights to represent info going in and out of the aliens head

There are 17 servo motors in the head 8 for the eyes and eyelid mechanism 2 for the eyebrows, 1 for the mouth, and 6 for the lip mechanisms.

All of the servos are connected to Polulu board. The board comes with its on software where you can move a motor and save that movement, and similar to stop motion, you can step by step create a sequence to play trough

I then painted the silicone skin using psycho paints using mainly sponges to get the texture as well as speckling, and a small bit of airbrush work was also done on the piece

Area 51 Alien

For my final year project, I worked on designing and fabricating an Animatronic alien head with the purpose of being a narrator-type character for TV. The Idea behind this character came from one of my favorite podcasts by comedian Tony Cantwell. He discusses a new cryptid each week. From that, I taught of a show where an alien in area 51 looks through files of sightings of various cryptids. This project began for me last summer when I began animatronics. It was something I was always interested in but felt it would be too difficult, but after some research, I started small and worked up to this project. My minor was animatronics as well, but all hand made so from there, I was able to improve all of my mechanisms by working in Fusion 360 and 3d printing all my pieces; this made them much cleaner and ran smoother. The overall project was a significant learning process taking on animatronics and two new software fusion 360 and ZBrush. I am glad I did because I've come out of it with a better understanding of all these skills, and moving forward, I can see more improvement to come.

2021 2022 2023 2024

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