Brutherford Industries LLC

This is an update that's been in the works for some time now.

After many years of working in design and manufacturing it is clear that i am most comfortable in the areas where the two overlap. Outside of my full time job, (which i am still devoted to in both spirit and hourly commitments) i have continually been working on my own personal designs AND collecting outdated, abandoned and misunderstood tools and machinery.

It only makes sense that i now return that machinery to its intended life and use it to mass produce my own goods. I am going to focus on low volume limited runs of fun  objects that make people smile, some will be my own original designs some will be from the fantastic network of artists and designers that i have met over the past 12 years. It's also possible that there are great collaborations ahead with artists i havn't met yet. I'm not really sure how to identify what will be the unifying theme of this project but the simplest explanation is that it will be a collection of goods curated and manufactured by Tamara and I.



This will all happen under the name Brutherford Industries, the website can be found at www.brutherford.com and is currently a place holder accepting signups for our mailing list. The plan is to go live with sales sometime in December. Our first item for sale will be a vinyl toy that some of you may already be familiar with, designed by myself and packaged with an amazing limited edition print by none other than the fabulous Tamara Petrosino.

I present to you you

THE ICE SCREAM MAN

Where does the Ice Scream Man project stand today?
I have built  test molds, run a few batches, found a few adjustments needed to be made, corrected the original sculpt and should be able to finish production molds and start production early next month. We are now finalizing the packaging (a full color box with more artwork from my amazing wife) and should have that ordered soon. The Ice Scream Man will be available through www.brutherford.com and a few other retailers each carrying their own limited colorway (flavor).

We have more toy designs up our sleeves as well as some proper functional items. We will not be limited to plastic goods we have projects lined up in glass, ceramic, metal, wood and various soft goods. Join the mailing list, stay tuned, and get ready for the fun.
 
-ryan AKA Brutherford

i like stickers

BOOM

some big news today...
ice scream man will exist as an actual item that you can buy...

until then...

more melted nasty things

i like to melt stuff

I'm still working on the Ice Scream Man, the updated properly scaled models have just been completed. I have to clean them up and get them ready to mold. I'll spend more time discussing that later. In the Meantime, here's something else cool.

I'm not usually interested in violent imagery but after sculpting the Ice Scream man i have become addicted to melting things. in particular i really like the idea of melting violent, angry, mean things in to gooey, gelatinous loveable puddles. Maybe it's something about taking away their power and making them soft... or maybe it's just fun.

i have a handful of these sculpts in progress right now but here is the first that i actually produced.

 

still a little violent but what about in some fun colors?

once again i am completely unaware of the size of my own monster hands. in the case of the cone i guess i underestimated the size of my mitts, this time i overestimated.

too big!!!

When i was doing the original sculpt for the ice scream skull i wasn't concerned with scale. The sculpting software works with units called vauxals which are similar to a 3-d vector...or infinitely scalable.

when i built the cones i used  a different software that is more reliant on actual measurements and made a guess on the overall size after a few rough calculations using my own hand for refrence.

I finally went out and picked up an actual ice cream cone for reference to start proper scaling for a new model. turns out i didn't exactly factor in the right percentages to make up for the fact that i have gorilla hands.

I was about 30% too big, i expected some variance but not quite this much.

I also recieved a very exciting delivery last week. a rotational molder!!!
Now i'll be able to make my little dudes in small production volumes on my own.
I'm a long way from being ready to start production but i'm still pretty excited.
The next step is to make a wax prototype of a true scale ice scream man and experiment to find the most viable way of producing my own molds for use with the rotational molder.

here's a video of the molder doing it's spiny thing.