Lomography wanted fresh accessory designs for their new Konstruktor camera. As the largest analogue photography community in the world, they were naturally drawn to collaborate with the largest community of designers and engineers in the world, GrabCAD! After a fun Design Challenge with 57 great entries - 3 winners were left standing. Hear how they approached their winning designs.
THE Al Dean of Develop3D competed and won 1st place in the Lens Cap Accessory category.
GC: Why did you pick the lens accessory category?
Al: It was an interesting challenge and I’d already fashioned a pinhole/bokeh filter for my Nikon – Shortly before some feckless wonder made off with it in LA.
GC: How much time did you spend on the design?
I spent an evening to do the modelling and a couple of hours to set-up and render the images with KeyShot. Most of that was just sitting while my aging MacBook’s fans went absolutely bat-sh!t crazy.
GC: What was the greatest challenge when designing your entry?
Um. Working out the mechanism and how it moved. Knowing what I’ve done, I’d do it entirely differently now. Slider rather than a rotational mechanism. The solid dataset helped a lot.
(Editor's note: at this point Lindsey added a few extra questions just for Al...)
GC: Are you a hipster?
Probably. Maybe. I’m too chubby to be a hipster.
GC: How hipster are you?
I’m tapping this into an iPhone with one hand, smoking an american spirit, riding my fixed gear bicycle whilst sporting an ironic moustache, skinny jeans, a flat cap and a flannel shirt. (Swap the moustache for a beard [from before they were cool] and the shirt for [for once] a hoodie featuring an All Girl AC/DC cover band from Portland and the bike for a shed and you’re about there. My single speed bike is just outside. I wish I was joking. It’s redonkulous, kid.)
Chuma from Nigeria won 1st place in Grip Accessory category:
GC: Why did you pick the grip accessory category?
Chuma: I've been a member of GrabCAD for a while and I had seen many challenges and felt like participating in one. I chose the grip category because when I was much younger I used to play with a Polaroid camera and being just a kid, balancing the camera to take shots was tough for me. I thought that having a grip, like the one I designed, will help kids develop a flair for photography also.
GC: How much time did you spend on it?
I spent two days in total. I designed three concepts for the grip but only uploaded one, as I thought it was the best of the three. First I drew them on paper and discussed them with a friend of mine, then went on to CAD.
GC: What were the challenges when creating your entry?
I think the only challenge was in uploading my design, it took a while because my internet connection was a bit slow (LOL). To GrabCAD, keep up the good work, sometimes I scroll through the community just to see how much fabulous work people do. To Lomography, thanks for this Challenge, hope some Konstructors get shipped down to Nigeria, there are some folks who would love them down here.
Tommy Mueller won 1st place in Wild Card Accessory category:
GC: Why did you choose this particular accessory/category?
TM: First off, I'm very excited about the challenge win. Analog photography was an old passion of mine (before digital media encompassed my hard drives), and I was excited to hear through GrabCAD's challenges of a company who has been bringing back film roll photography, and much more. I had never heard of Lomography before the challenge, so it was a pleasure to participate in the event.
GC: How much time did you spend creating your entry?
TM: My winning entry took one day to piece together using Solidworks software, although the idea had been turning in my mind for a week prior. Spending that week perusing around Lomography's website, I was looking for some niche that wasn't covered in their online outlet. Feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of great designs, accessories, and add-ons already manufactured and available online for purchase, I was almost fully deterred from any further attempts to follow my initial entry Konstruktor Kase by Tommy.
Then I had a stroke of creativity with the Film Pack Rack - Lomography Challenged offering something extremely original to any photographers needs; back up film rolls to go!
Thanks again for reaching out for my input, PLUS thank you for featuring me in the blog post. I look forward to making GrabCAD news for many times to come.
Congrats to all winners and Lomography for such an awesome Challenge!
