Jacob Rothermel: Technical Design & Management: Carnegie Mellon University: Academic Work (2010-2013)

In addition to my production work for School of Drama productions I also did quite a bit of work for various classes (in grad school, no less; imagine that). The following is some samples of drafting and work (realized and unrealized) I'm particularly proud of.

To Scale Dinosaurs (not...really)

For a few years now, my professor David Boevers has been taking those balsa wood cut-outs of dinosaur skeletons (the ones you invariably get at the Museum of Natural History and craft stores, etc), enlarging them, and using cutting them out of 3/4" ply. This requires scaling up jpegs of the cut-outs in AutoCAD, tracing them in polylines, and laying them out to cut on the School of Drama's CNC router. Traditionally in the past it's been during the summer "PreCollege" period but we did some additional work in order to display them for the Pittsburgh Maker Faire in November, 2011. The stegosauruses below are roughly 50% to scale (we did the math; real ones were about the size of a city bus).

Afterward, in the spring, my Scenic Painting class took one of the skeletons and, using foam, cheesecloth, muslin, and a LOT of white glue, gave it muscle and skin (using paleontology books as reference). Then we painted it, again using a particular paleontology book's artist rendering for reference. To commemorate the end of the 2011/12 school year, we displayed both of these projects in Purnell's main lobby. If I remember correctly, we nicknamed her Bessie. (The out-of-place-looking rectangles sitting on each piece are plaques each listing the students responsible for each)

The lobby display; space was TIGHT.
Each of these were approximately 20ft long by JUST under 8ft wide;
they BARELY fit through the main doors of Purnell's lobby

Skeletal Steg, obviously

Bessie
She was a group effort but I actually did a lot of the head's carving;
we followed the reference books for her eye placement, which is why
they look different from the skeletal version

Slightly pulled back view

Roughly the same view of Bessie as above;
Notice the skates under her feet - the designers of the cut-outs never
contemplated "filling out" their skeletons,
as such Bessie wouldn't actually stand without help;
that and moving her fragile body
(she IS mostly foam) was surprisingly difficult

OTHER CLASS ASSIGNMENTS

The following are just examples of my drafting; mostly from my first and second year. No designs were fully realized as most of these were exercises in scenic engineering.

CUSTOM DOG & TRACK

Custom design for track & dog

POP-UP CHAIR

An element from a School of Music opera production that was cut for budgetary reasons. The chair was flat and flush with the show deck, then pops up into place magically where it is then sit- and stand-able. There are some design flaws that I can see now, only a year later but I maintain that my use of hardwood in the design would work in full scale but my 3" maso scale model did eat itself in actual practice. Ah well...

Pop-up Chair components in Layout

Pop-up Chair in Schematic

ATYPICAL SUNROOF

Another project for Kevin Hines' technical design classes: An atypical sunroof, modeled after a roll-top desk. It's FAR from the simplest design possible and since we never went into actual prototyping on this assignment, I've always been curious if it would work...