Maybe I have a soft spot for her robots because they are blue or because they give me another opportunity to sneak in a little personal history. In the 1980's Hasbro sold a toy robot that 'talked'. Casey was it's name and here is a short video of the ad for Casey.
In the mid-1980's I was hired by a brilliant engineer, John Perkins, to create some video to be used to create one of the first demos for a new video game system based on video tape. (This was prior to the advent of DVDs.) We were working for Nolan Bushnell of Atari fame and he, in turn, was charged with creating such a product by Hasbro. Hasbro picked it up as the NEMO project. (Look up NEMO on YouTube)
I used Casey, the Talking Blue Robot as the lead character in my demo video game. I still have the original videos and need to get around to posting them someday on YouTube simply for historical purposes.
It was one of the most fun projects I've ever been involved with but, unfortunately, Hasbro was forced to abandon it because they could not get the costs down low enough for Toys R Us to carry it.
But, I should also note that NEMO made the 25 Dumbest Moments in Gaming list at #19! It's a little disappointing that we only made #19. Maybe that's because they got their numbers wrong. They claim Hasbro spent $20 million. Actually, Hasbro spent $35 million on it before scrapping the system. That's GOT to be worth at least one or two higher positions on the list! LOL!
At any rate, I'm certainly partial to blue robots. But, I'm also appreciate of the fact that one thing often leads to another. My opportunity to work for Nolan Bushnell and Hasbro came from a person that had once worked as a consultant for Astrocade, the video game company for which I was an employee.
The point of this story is that one thing... John working for us... often ends up leading to another... i.e. My working for John. That's how opportunities grow.
And, in the immediate case, we have another instance of one thing leading to another great opportunity. And, it came from a comment on the SusanBlueRobot article.
A person that goes by the name CPEEP commented on the article about SusanBlueRobot's work in sliceform creations and I was so intrigued by the comment that I decided to see if I could locate CPEEP's work. Fortunately, I was successful in doing so.
CPEEP'S Blog is called EXTREME CARDS AND PAPERCRAFTING And, it is a great place to visit with lots of tutorials. Here is just one sample of what you will find there.
CPEEP'S work is quite broad in the methods used.In addition to sliceform, you'll find paper folding, pop up cards and paper animata (mechanical models) which are equally interesting. I wandered around for quite a while and was not the least bit bored by what I found.
Apparently, CPEEPS is not yet and eCraft owner and is able to cut to a Robo Craft directly from Corel so not all of their creations are available in SVG. Hopefully that situation will change in the near future! In the meantime I am enjoying the creativity of another person that thinks in 3D, all the while being thankful that one thing does, indeed, lead to another!
2 comments:
{waving}
I did go and check out the features of the ecraft. NO CUTTING MATS! 12" wide!! I see the appeal. When little Robo bites the dust I know where I'll be.
Carol
Extreme Cards and Papercrafting
When people already have a cutting machine, I urge them to wait a bit to see how Craftwell recovers from their false start with the software.
In the long term, the opening snafu doesn't bother me. But, there is no reason for buying early if one already has a cutting machine. There are two parts to the eCraft equation and while I am VERY impressed by the hardware aspects of the product, I am not so impressed by the software potential for the immediate future.
For those without a cutting machine, I would still DEFINITELY say the eCraft is my choice because the learning curve for any cutter is going to probably parallel the improvement of the software once the SVG issues are fixed.
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