Ocarina of Time Zora's Sapphire Ring

Greetings, internet traveler!  Nearly a year after I started and then shelved the concept, I have now finished creating my own engagement ring inspired by the Zora's Sapphire from the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.  This project took a lot of power, strength, and courage!  I've never made any sort of jewelry before, let alone something requiring gem settings.  To be honest, I feel like I really lucked out on this one.

This ring was designed in the 3D modeling program Maya, printed in wax then cast into gold by Shapeways, and then fitted with gems by a local jeweler.

Ugh, pretend my hands don't look so bad

Step One: Modeling

As usual, this project started with a model.  Since I've never modeled a ring before, most of this process was trial, error, and correction.  Over and over.  Seriously, I'm pretty sure I started over at least twice, not including the times I scrapped the band.

My first two "final" models

Last model before printing the end result

A ring capable of holding gems is a complicated thing, so there were many factors I had to consider when making the model.  For readability's sake, I'll make a list.

• Design: perhaps the hardest part of all was simply choosing how to make the darn thing look.  I wanted to stay as true to the game's design as possible, but translating a low-poly 3D mesh that floats in the air into a physical thing meant making some changes.  The most obvious is probably the gems-- pentagons aren't really a normal gem cut, so I chose to arrange the prongs themselves in a pentagon and just use standard diamond-cut gems.  I wasn't sure it would work, but I'm happy with the end result.
• Band size: not every ring is going to fit every finger, so getting the size right (or at least reasonably close) is important.  My US ring size is about a 5.5.  Conversion charts tell me that a 5.5 band has a 16.1 mm inner diameter.  Luckily Maya has separate options for setting overall radius and section radius, so getting the rough sizing going was pretty easy.  Do keep in mind that Maya isn't exact, though-- you might need to measure in a separate program like NetFabb and tweak it a bit.  I went with a 1.3 mm thickness and then flattened out the inner edges, which fit my finger pretty snugly.
• Prong thickness: this is one I really struggled to find information on.  As I have no formal training as a jeweler, I kinda had to make an educated guess and used Shapeways' metals printing guide to choose a thickness for the prongs.  Minimum recommended thickness of unsupported wires is 1.0 mm?  Works for me!  I left some extra length on them, as well, so that the professional jeweler would have plenty to work with.
• Overall gem seating thickness: again, I defaulted to the Shapeways guide because I didn't know what else to do.  Just about every part of this ring is at least 1.0 mm thick, minus the tips of the wings coming from the base triangle.
• The gems themselves: as you can see from the render, I went ahead and modeled in a 5 mm diamond-cut gem to use as a reference while arranging the prongs.  This part of the design made me the most nervous.  Traditional gem setting has the jeweler cutting a "seat" into the prongs to properly fit the gem, while I modeled the prongs to already fit around the gem.  Unfortunately, I modeled the gems themselves wrong, so this seat looks a little wonky in person.  The jeweler was able to work around it, though.  I'll revise this for model 2.0.

There was one thing I didn't think about, however-- how the ring would actually sit once it was put on a finger.  The final design has it standing up higher than I had imagined, meaning it's prone to catching on and knocking against just about everything it comes into contact with.  This is mostly an issue caused by my final band design, which I tried to make a little more fancy when I shouldn't have.  I will want to correct this for version 2.0, of course, but it'll do for now.

Step Two: Printing

Thanks to Shapeways, printing was the easiest part.

Test prints

I went through three different test prints.  The first one in plastic, seen on the left, was a little too fragile and didn't quite make it through the printing process.  For the second one, center, I scaled up the base triangle a bit to give it more bulk.  I also went with a thicker band, which ended up not quite fitting with the style I was trying to create.  The last one was my metal test.  I had this printed in bronze in the hopes that a jeweler could use it to test the gem settings.  Unfortunately, this led me to finding out that most jewelers won't touch bronze because it's so brittle.  We had to try several stores before someone would agree to even take a look.  Once we finally got an OK from someone who knew what they were doing, I took a deep breath and ordered the gold ring.

Step Three: Finishing

I was on pins and needles for a couple weeks waiting for the gold ring to come.  All I could think about was the potential for things to go wrong.  I was not going to be happy if I had spent a bunch of cash on a hunk of broken ring.  Eventually it did arrive and appeared to have all the prongs, so we took it back to the jeweler to have the gems set and the polygons polished out.  The jeweler we went with offered birth stone jewelry, so they picked us out some Swiss blue topazes to use instead of the super cheap cubic zircon I had bought as test gems.  A week or two later, the ring was done.

Do do do dooo!

<3

During this time, my boyfriend and I decided it was time to settle down.  We didn't exactly know how long this process was going to take, so we kinda jumped the gun and had the proposal before we got the gems set.  Oops!


I'll eventually get around to making corrections to this model and then releasing it for sale on Shapeways.  For now, I kinda want to just enjoy knowing that the ring on my finger is completely one-of-a-kind and represents me and my fiance better than a store-bought ring ever could.  End of sappy post.

Ocarina of Time Coasters: Part Five

Hello!  Hey, listen!  Welcome to the fifth and final part of my Ocarina of Time coaster project!  In this part, I'll finally get around to finishing these things so I can move on with my life.  For the previous post, see Part Four: Casting.

Part Five: Finishing

After giving my coasters a day or so to fully cure, I peeled them out of their molds to see how they turned out.  I'll be honest, they're not great.  There are still some surface bubbles and rough edges in the molds themselves, which transferred directly onto the casts.  I cleaned up what I could with my X-acto knife and sanded down any jagged edges I created in the process.

Since my originals didn't get a super smooth finish, the casts came out a little dull.  I tried to remedy this by giving them a quick spray with some glossy sealant I had on hand.  For whatever reason, this ended up being a terrible idea.  The sealant ended up pooling up on the surface in some spots, causing ugly little bumps I can't even reach with my sandpaper.  It looks like I'll need better molds to get a shiny surface on these coasters!

Despite this setback, I decided it'd be best to just continue on now that I'd gotten so close to being done with this set of coasters.  I bought a roll of adhesive-backed cork-- originally meant to be used as a shelf liner-- to use as a backing for the coasters to prevent them from sliding around and scratching up the tables they'll be used on.  Cutting them with my X-acto knife was a little messy, but it let me hold them down and cut an outline into the backing before I peeled off the paper.

My poor table gets cut a lot...

At long last, I've gathered the six medallions!  This project ended up being a lot more complicated and time-consuming than I expected, and I'm glad to finally call it done.

Woo!

I had originally thought to sell these, but considering how wonky they look and how many man-hours they require, I'm not confident that's a route I want to take right now.  Either way, I've learned a lot from this project, and I hope you have gotten something of value out of reading these posts.  Happy crafting, dear reader!

Skyrim Dragon Priest Mask: Part Two

Hello again, internet person!  I've been debating what to do about this post for a couple weeks now.  If you remember Part One, this started out as a challenging project.  Part Two just got worse and worse, so I'll focus on what I did wrong and what I should have done so that I'll have some good notes to use should I attempt something like this (again) in the future.

First, I'll share my results so you know what I mean when I say this turned out pretty bad.

Final Results

Glamour shot, if you will

So this is a pretty good picture simply because you can see most of the flaws right up front.  Weird splotches and holes in the layers of resin, blobs around the eyes and mouth that weren't supposed to be there, a nice big dent in the forehead section, and some warping around the bottom.  I know what caused everything except that dent-- seriously, the heck happened there?-- and will outline which step caused what below.

Step Two: Molding

Creating a glove mold for this mask seemed like an easy enough thing to do, but many of the surface flaws came from me not knowing what I was doing.  I used Smooth-On's Dragon Skin rubber, brushing on a few layers over the course of a couple days.  This was a good choice of materials, but I skipped a very crucial step-- adding a thickening agent to the last couple layers to beef it up.  This is especially important to do on something like this mask, which has some really pointy high-points and corners.  My mold ended up ripping around the eyes, mouth, and nose areas when I went to demold, which caused those weird surface anomalies.  It also made a huge mess in my mother mold.

Of course, the mother mold had its own problems outside of some spills.  I tried to go the cheap route and use plaster bandages for this hard outer shell.  Pro tip-- don't try to use plaster bandages.  They were not nearly sturdy enough for this job and my mother mold ended up too floppy and soft in places that needed to be rock-hard, like the entire jaw.  That might actually be where the dent in the forehead came from, now that I think about it.  As a bonus, the powder from the bandages goes everywhere and there seems to be nothing you can do to stop this.  I will most likely look for another Smooth-On product next time I make a mother mold, as I think they have a paste meant for this purpose.

The other problem I had was that the rubber kept flopping around inside the mother mold any time I tried to rotate the whole thing, which is definitely not ideal considering the mother is meant to hold everything in place.  I ended up fixing this by taping everything to a piece of cardboard, but it wasn't elegant in the slightest.  I believe the proper method is to bolt everything to a piece of plywood when you have an open-face mold like this, but I'm still looking into it.  It might just be a matter of making things properly from the start.

Step Three: Casting

The casting process had its own challenges, the main one being that I was very timid with the slushing part because I knew there was a good chance my mold would leak or spill since it was so poorly-built.  You can see this in the picture as the spots that ended up grey instead of red-- that's where a layer didn't quite cover the entire surface of the mold.  Getting the jaw and chin area covered was especially difficult, since it was prime "spill it all over myself if I do it wrong" area.  They ended up very flimsy as a result.

Because of this lack of coverage, I ended up doing too many layers of the red resin.  This was a clear-cast resin I had tinted with the intent of leaving a glass-like layer on top of the dark grey base.  In some spots this kind of worked, but overall the effect didn't come through like I had intended.  I think if I try this again, I'll paint the first layer onto the mold instead of casting it so I can control it a little better.  I'm not sure if XTC-3D would work for this purpose, but it might be worth trying.

Step Four: Sanding and Weathering

This step worked out about like I planned, so I'll just touch on it briefly.  After the cast had finished hardening, I wet-sanded it starting at 400 grit all the way up to 1500 grit or so.  This wouldn't have been necessary if my original had been nice and smooth, mind you.  I'll give it another sanding session before I attempt another mold so I can skip this post-processing on the pulls.

Once it dried, I mixed some black acrylic paint with water and just slopped it into the seams and scratches of the mask and wiped up with excess with a paper towel.  I could have done a better job of this, but I think it turned out kinda nice considering how much of a mess the rest of the mask was.

More Pictures

Here's the rest of the pictures I took before sending this mask off as a Christmas present.  I've also compiled them into an Imgur album if that's less painful to view.  Hopefully this summary of my comedy of errors saves someone from making the same mistakes!

Before post-processing

Front view

The other side

Close-up of the bad layering

I taped up the back in the hopes of
reinforcing it, since the edges were very frail