Tag: art

AirPod Container Unit [WEEK 1 – AUG 2025]

It’s been a while, been practicing my hard-surface sculpting skills, working on projects and having come back from a recent NJ trip with family, wanted to finally showcase my attempt at a Air Pod Container, in industrial-futuristic looking fashion.

Started with a simple container design and adding details from there. Heavily inspired by Metal Gear Solid V resource containers and Death Stranding containers, I made a Air Pod size container.

Picking a overall final design, I made some possible colorways that can come out of it.

I had a bit of a monkey-wrench thrown in… when I built my first iteration using ZBrush version 2024 and had to go back to my personal version 2023 license. Unfortunately trying to open a ZBrush project file in a earlier version made it crash every time making my first design file unusable unless I upgraded…

So I decided to start from scratch with a new iteration. Which wasn’t too hard as its just a simple cube with extrusion and hard-surface details. Went with a different take with this second-version:

From here I was reaching the two-week cycle, I promised myself to finish this project out here because as a designer you can always iterate and improve on your previous designs. And rather be stuck on a infinite loop, I have been keeping myself accountable to work in two-week sprints. If I decide to revisit this and spend more time I would add a lot more details, such as a key ring, handle, screws, panel-lines, etc.

I printed a models of various sizes, smaller ones first as test prints to ensure design looked good and resolve any faulty printer issues (there’s always something awry when printing the first time). And afterwards printed a couple working models, primed, painted, decaled and top-coated.

It was a fun project, definitely a good learning experience and exciting to further see new possibilities from here on. I was also amazed how the ZBrush model details were kept in the final print even to the surface etchings, a good sign for panel lines and even adding my signature.

Week 1 [MAY 25]

Had a bit of a break, but this week I was able to get back in to the groove of things. I continued looking into the Batter Hammer design (name to be changed…) and made some ideation sketches from the previous blockout I had made.

There are still problems I see with the design, biggest of all how the core functionality works as its a futuristic weapon design that is similar to a stun baton and uses energy projectiles.

I started sculpting in ZBrush, but decided to hold off until the design is further fleshed out.

I did continue practicing hard-surface sculpting and will continue to do so.

Week 2 [FEB25]

Week 2 [FEB25]

This week I spent time getting into diving into different topics/projects I hope to work on.

One such project, I call the Lab, which will be a 3D representation of my design studio and fictional hyperbolic time chamber. I wanted to use Unreal Engine 5 to make it a explorable environment and started by testing how I can import objects into this software. I took my MGSV container model from Fusion 360 and was able to successfully import it, but I quickly realized how you import the model is important. My model had multiple bodies, textures and shaders that came from the Fusion 360 software. After multiple runs, I simplified the model essentially by combining as many bodies as I could. Good to know for the future!

Here are three models stacked in the UE5 level:

One thing I wanted to add was a mini-remote facility on the edge of the Lab, I got the idea one day during a roadtrip with family, I would see tiny facilities housed around by a metal fence, a small driveway for 1-2 vehicles, patch of grass, tiny trees and a small building that looks like a design team would go to everyday to do their work. I made a tiny sketch of what it could like if I gradually get to building the Lab:

My little brother lost a piece from his Gundam Providence MG model kit, tasked me to model and 3d print it, the part ‘J10’ was modelled in Fusion 360 and made the slice run in Chitubox, tonight I will be printing it with him, hopefully they come out well!!

I started sketching at a coffee shop, hope to get back to the groove of things and to build a habit now as I grow my skillset.

Here’s also a quick hour run in Photoshop, trying to re-learn how I used to blend paints, my current brush set is not really ideal though… might revert back to default brush pack…

Lastly I practiced hard-surface design through ZBrush, doing a couple hours each day at my local coffee shop:

MGSV Resource Container

To kick things off… I always wanted to re-create the small container unit as seen in one of my all time favorite video-games, Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain. This small container housed a type of resource mineral which Venom Snake could find in enemy bases and was color-coded to represent the resource. I don’t know why, but I was enamored by this container, it had good design and the graphics on it were simple and industrial.

After watching Wokkie’s video on how he creates his container projects, I started using Fusion 360 as well and was able to get to a finished first prototype build of the container.

Pretty happy with the result, the goal was to capture the look and feel from the game and even though some details are not accurate/perfect, it’s acceptable in my opinion. I was able to print it as well and will show the results in a future post. From here I was excited to look into how custom water decals should be constructed and how to spray paint this model.

POD (Print-On-Demand)

POD (Print-On-Demand)

One endeavor that I was looking forward was to somehow get into a creative side gig that could earn me some pocket money while continuing to work on art was to pursue print-on-demand businesses such as RedBubble. I had various ideas of creating designs around Metroid helmets, Cyberpunk 2077 references and Nintendo controllers. But three things I learned very quickly:

Copyright infringement and trademark work is not encouraged.

Basically creating a design that resembles another intellectual property is actually against the law. This confused and quite honestly bummed me out as I see literally thousands of designs on RedBubble using intellectual properties. If everyone else is doing it, why can’t I? Digging deeper into it, anyone can post fan art or use references to intellectual properties until their account gets banned. Big companies such as Nintendo and Disney also aren’t that strict it seems to send cease-and-desist letters to every account using their properties. In the long run, it does not seem worth it, but is a uphill battle if you want to get noticed above this popular trending topics.

Few of the designs you will see when you look for Metroid related designs, most highly (if not completely) resemble Nintendo's intellectual property
Few of the designs you will see when you look for Metroid related designs, most highly (if not completely) resemble Nintendo’s intellectual property

It is not a sprint, but a marathon.

Or even better a journey to get some decent income from a print-on-demand business. It takes hard work and consistent effort on your channel to get some income down the road. From what I’ve learned in the numerous online tutorials, to have some success, you should be working a couple hours every day and posting as many designs as possible to start building traction.

Aim your designs on trending pocket niches

But even then, you should aim to focus on trending pocket niches that can help grab customer’s attention to your channel. There’s a lot of good info on the web about this, but essentially what many designers do is they figure out what is a good trend/niche subject that people are interested in (such as meme shirts or coffee) and if that topic doesn’t produce many designs/results, it is a sweet spot for that designer to submit designs to that topic. That way users that are looking at that niche will most likely see your designs first, resulting in better probability of sales for you.

This week I certainly learned a lot about how print-on-design businesses work and what it takes to try in getting some success. It is not as simple as I first thought, but now I am considering trying to still tackle it, either way it would be experience. My goal is to use my artwork mainly if I am to open a RedBubble channel.

If you have any thoughts on the subject matter, leave a comment below! I am new to this, so any feedback is openly welcomed. How has your past experience been in the print-on-demand realm? Do you know something that would help and I missed here?