Dueling Mergansers

 On a recent walk through Stanley Park, the winter gloom was lifted quite handily by a small flock of hooded mergansers. A group of six or so males had gathered the attention of a pair of females and were in competition with one another to try and win their attention. Hooded mergansers are some of our favorite ducks so we were very pleased to have this little window into their social lives.

 Hooded mergansers already have a lovely crest (as you can clearly see) which they can raise or lower depending on their needs. In this particular event it was all raised crests all the time as they stretched their necks, growled (more ducks growl than you expect apparently) and chased one another around.

 We don't have a good idea of how elaborate or drawn out their courtship rituals are or whether any of the group were paired up before we left, but who could resist this face?

Octopus Medallion

 Earlier this year I had designed an octopus-themed medallion for 3d printing and fabrication, but the toll the CPA took on my personal life pushed the actual completion back about 6 months. The original design came together in zBrush, which is an ideal program for creating lumpy creatures covered in tentacles and suckers. The only problem I find working in 3d, which is entirely my fault, is that its easy to put in details that will never print out or to forget just how heavy metal will be in the end.

 As evidence of this error, I printed the original design out at 2-inches across which sounds small when you're just looking at a ruler but comes out pretty beefy in real life. For a piece I had envisaged being printed flat, the 3d printer ultimately came up with a pretty crazy angle to print at. All the support scaffold on the bottom looks pretty neat but is really just cut away in the end.

 The final piece accidentally broke in the casting process since it had a greater volume than originally estimated so two batches of metal had to be poured into the mold in order to complete it. As a result it split down the middle but Andy was able to solder it back into one piece after I cleaned and filed the fragments. I actually quite like the look of it is this way and feel that the break adds character to the look of the piece.

 

The other blessing with 3d design is that its really easy to scale things down and try again, so this size will be a one-off attempt but we're going to try again with a smaller pendant as well as cufflinks and maybe even earring studs if the detail will hold up at such a small size.