(Now with more Blender) Wing Coin Design

Hey all,

My Wing is holding a contest to design the new Wing coin, so I thought I'd give it a hand.  Below is what I got so far.  The cloud textures are by [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].

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Front

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Back (still haven't quite figured out what to do yet.)

The "glitter" stuffs is meant to show that those surfaces will be matte and the other surfaces, including the clouds, will be smooth and glossy.  I have no idea why there are roosters on the logo.. if you go images.google.com and search for "70 ISRW" you get some of my stuff hitting first (hehe!), but here's a link to the regular logo: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Here's my progress to 3D-ify it. I figure I can sell them with the presentation even if the coin design isn't that bully.

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..And here's the back.  I like the white AF logo, but I'm not sure they'll go for it.  If I get the coin made, I'll see if I can get one for the artist who did the clouds, I really like the "texture" of the image he made.

The text says "Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance" in:
1. Morse code (the start of signals intel)
2. Japanese (WWII)
3. German (WWII)
4. Korean
5. Chinese (Korea/Vietnam)
6. Vietnamese
7. Russian (Cold War)
8. Arabic (Gulf War, Iraq War)
9. Pashto (Afghan War)
10. Binary (Cyber)

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Very cool. Not much I can really say about it. Although I don't know if the cloud texture makes it too busy, or if it's the combination of clouds and text. Might look different in real life though. Overall, very well done.  

Thanks for the comment, Scott. I agree it's not the best design--hopefully the coin minting company will help come up with a better way to make it stand out. I'm thinking they'll be raised 1mm above the clouds making them stand out a bit better in physical form. This coin company seems to be a bit more professional than the last one, so I'm hopeful the design will turn out as intended. The last company that made the squadron coin did a rather poor job and didn't take the care to engrave them as deeply as the design called for, nor did they get the color right.

Here's a Freestyle render just for kicks:
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Yeah, hopefully it turns out well. So it's a coin company and not like a 3D printing company, or is it a 3D printing company that specializes in coins? Also, do you have a plan on when they're going to be printed/made?

Howdy all,

Sorry for not getting back to you Scott.  They will be pressed from metal blanks, just like a regular coin would be.  The painting is done by hand or by a pantograph machine.  They are running low on the old coins, so as soon as we finalize the design we'll be ordering 300 coins with the new design.

Following my rule of "Presentation is More Important than Content", I built a formal presentation document with the various angles, explanation of the colors and elements, and a description of the build process.  There were a few nice submissions I went up against (a total of 5-6 other submissions), and mine was selected.

I was asked to make a few changes, so this is round two... we'll see how they go:
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[note: the badges on the back represent the different career fields that work in the Wing.  I don't know them all, so these are just fill ins. Some are supposed to be obscured, but an inverse color will be screened on the beveled surface of the AF logo (if possible).]

One other change that you can't see here--the "dual tone" look of having two metals stamped together was scrapped.  Instead the coin will be pressed from a single piece of silvery metal and then the shield will be painted gold-color.

Congratulations on your entry being selected! When are IRL photos of the coin going to come out?

Yeah congrats. That's a cleaner design, looks excellent.

Just some final adjustments.  I don't care much for the badges on the back, but I'm going to see if we can proceed with the version with badges scattered.

This is a complete rebuild.  I made .svg parts for everything so we can scale it up without losing any fidelity.  This is set to 1,000px I believe, I made a 3,000px version for the company to use.
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Also, I did some renders of the newly made .svg version of the logo just for kicks:
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Also: I've been using Inkscape a lot over the past six months or so and have gotten quite used to creating elements in Inkscape and porting them over to Blender for 3d-ifying. Would anybody be interested in a tutorial/guide/demo on the "best practices" I've uncovered moving files between the two programs?

Ummm... yes, please!!

Teaser frame:
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Woah, those spinney-looking-things act as masks over the clay render?

Oh yeah! It took a while to come up with this method. Next time I get on the desktop, I'll post the nodes to show how it works, if anybody's interested.

I was jumping for joy when the two halves merged together perfectly.   

Changes--there were a few steps between this one and my last posting, including one with 29 badges. They got too small that we had to ditch the idea since they wouldn't render properly on a 2.5" coin.

Instead we'll be using a dotted globe:
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The key's individual teeth each have their own significance, each representing a different intelligence discipline.

We're probably done at this point--I gave the Commander three versions with slight modifications. If he selects one of the versions without any additional changes, we'll send that design to the minting company to get made. The GIMP file is 150MB, at 3,000x3,000 and 300 dpi. Most of the elements are curves, so it can be quickly mapped up as an .svg as well.

Well,

It's done--the final version is below:
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The coins will be ordered tomorrow and we'll get the product by mid-January. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Here's the beauty render:
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The coins finally arrived.  I'm going to be typing up an article for my blog, my Wing's Facebook post (possibly) and I'm going to try to publish it on BlenderNation (hopefully we can avoid the anti-U.S. anti-military comments we had last time).

I'd like help in deciding which images to use... what do you all think?
1.[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
2. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
3. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
4. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
5. [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
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What would you change about the one you selected (less contrast, smoother, brighter, etc)?

Thanks for your help!

Not to spill too much from the "making of" article--but here are some more pics:
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One last picture before I pack the coins up and ship them back.
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Those really turned out great. It's cool to be able to scroll back and see how this started off and then all the changes that resulted in the final product.