Institute of Art Design + Technology
Dún Laoghaire

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.

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.