Sketches for Altered Object Design

Here are some very quick sketches I threw together in Photoshop for the design. While doing them, I noticed another issue that will constrain the form of the model: the NES controller's Start and Select buttons don't have separate rubber contacts below them. Given that I don't want to destroy the controller or its components for this project, I've decided to keep those buttons in the model such that they determine the orientation and placement of the letters "R" and "E", because they're the two that would occur where the Select and Start buttons are.

An image showing where the contacts are on the controller:








Note that the placement of the "F" in "FREAK" is such that it covers all the contacts for the D-pad.

Another thing I intend to do with the model is to add 0.5-1mm deep cutouts of directional arrows on the "F", "Select" on "R", "Start" on "E", "B" on "A", and "A" on "K", so the object retains a semblance of obviousness to its function.

I forget whether or not I've mentioned this yet in the blog, but ideally, I'd like to be able to hook my old NES up during the exhibition so people can have a play with the printed controller and compare it to my other controller. Issues standing in the way of this are:
- I need to find the power cord (it's loitering around my room somewhere),
- I need to find an appropriate RF cable converter (I've got one that converts it to Component, so hopefully that'll do the trick)
- I need to make sure my old NES system still works.

Failing that, I'll probably just bring the system in and not bother to hook it up to anything, just so people have something more substantial to relate the object to than itself or another controller.

And with that, I should probably get some sleep. Tomorrow, I'll do a timelapse recording of myself getting the 3D model thrown together. I'll probably resort to using Sketchup for certain technical parts that require precise dimensioning, geometry inference, and 3D text, simply because I'm so familiar with it. I could look up the tutorials for 3DSMax, but that process would certainly take longer than making a model in Sketchup, using Babel3D to convert it to .3ds format, then doing whatever it is I need with it in 3DSMax.