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Gashapon Organ Machine (Final Project from Isaac S.)

Posted by Isaac Sanchez on

Project Title: Gashapon Organ Machine

Description: My project is the Gashapon Organ Machine. The concept was to create a machine that was simple and nostalgic on the surface, but unsettling and slightly gross when activated. The plates of the machine have inviting drawings that allow it to blend in with typical coin machines (at least at first). The idea with this wearable is that the wearer of the machine is distributing their actual organs to others. When an audience member provides the wearer a coin, the user will turn the crank of the machine to surprise the audience member with a random organ. The organs’ designs are simple at a glance, with a friendly face and simplistic shape for most organs, but they also house details reminiscent of actual body parts, such as arteries and veins. The anthropomorphic features of these plush organs are due to two goals: wanting to create friendly toys that look similar to those found in actual toy capsule machines, and wanting to illustrate the connection between these organs and the lives that they support.

I created this work to test my costume and machine-making abilities. I aimed to create something both artistically appealing and functional. I also enjoyed the concept of capsule machines, and I wanted to develop a piece that allowed me to relive those childhood memories, while also constructing a thought-provoking piece that could catch an adult’s attention and potentially help them relive their childhood. In addition, the capsule machine design allowed me to add more artistic pieces inside the machine to further expand the appeal and complexity of the overall piece. Finally, I created this piece so that I can initiate more interactions with others, as this piece provides a great opportunity to talk with others about the broad but impactful topic of organ donation/value.

Tools and Techniques: In terms of digital fabrication materials, I created the machine with plexiglass acrylic. The plexiglass was used so that the machine could better resemble the plastic look of gumball machines. The crank handle of the machine was created with gray PLA filament to better match the design of toy capsule machine cranks (although I plan to give the crank a silver finish in the future). Finally, the capsule plushies were created with felt. The felt was chosen for its ability to be both sewed and engraved, which made creating the plushies easier (my next iteration of the plushies may be created with needle felting instead).

I used Meshmixer to create the crank handle model, which Dr. Hope improved by making it a solid model (I forgot that a hollow 3D model is detrimental to printing through FDM) and adding a wider hole so that a rod could be inserted into the handle.

I used MakerCase to create the shapes of the sides for the boxes of the gashapon machine. I then used Adobe Illustrator to add holes and slots to the sides where they were needed (such as for the coin slot and the capsule slots). I also used Clip Studio Paint to draw both the organ patterns and the engraving designs for the machine, with Adobe Photoshop used to convert the machine engravings into BMP-based images for rastering.

Finally, I used Adobe Illustrator to prepare my felt organ patterns for engraving. The first heart plushie prototype was engraved at the Art and Exhibition Hall by Dr. Hope, and the rest of the plushies were engraved at mHUB through raster engraving (they use a laser cutting software for their lasers called UCP by Universal Laser Systems). For the mHUB engravings, I turned all images black so that only raster engraving would occur, which is likely what resulted in the other plushies’ details being less noticeable than those of the heart prototype.

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