neXus by Pieter Diepenmaat
When Pieter Diepenmaat was finishing his graduation project for HP Labs Bristol, he asked me if I could do a some 3D renderings for him. Pieter designed a handheld device for location aware gaming in urban areas. Players would have to listen around for animals and catch those, making them become the animal. In a rock-paper-scissors like game, players had to use these animals to scare away weaker animals of other players.
Being the good Samaritan I used to be back then, I agreed. Pieter gave me a few Illustrator drawings and material specifications: rubber for the gray and yellow parts, anodized aluminium for for the mouth and nylon fabric for the finger strap. Naturally, he wanted Apple-like reflections in a white floor, which I have to admit are tremendously useful in print, as it frees you from rectangular shapes, borders and fixed placement. The headphones are also part of his gaming system; unfortunately, Pieter conveniently forgot to mention that initially, grrrr.
As a present, I made a fourth rendering, depicting his neXus as Pac-Man, opposing a blue ghost. The ghost's material has a variable opacity, which depends on the facing ratio or angle of incidence with the surface.