Hello, this is Sone.

Recently, I received two enormous bunches of Shine Muscat grapes (hereafter “Shine Ma”) from my parents, and I’ve been picking off a few each day to eat. They’re so delicious. Up until now, pineapple had always been my favorite fruit, but ever since I properly tried Shine Ma a few years ago, it completely took over the top spot.

When I looked up the history of Shine Muscat on Wikipedia, I learned that it took nearly 30 years to develop and was officially registered as a variety in Japan in 2006—a fruit truly destined to be a bestseller. No wonder it tastes so good.

It’s been a while since my last update, but I’ve been continuing to experiment with 3D printing in between work. By adjusting the raft settings, exposure time, and the strength and number of supports, I’ve gradually gotten to the point where I can at least get decent prints out.

There’s still plenty of room for improvement to achieve higher precision, but toward the end of August, I started thinking that I wanted to seriously create an actual piece using the printer. Still, without a concrete deadline, I knew I’d end up dragging things out, so I decided to enter a modeling competition with a late-September deadline. When I searched for something like “modeling competition,” I found two that seemed like a good fit, so I decided to apply for both.

For the following month, I worked on the pieces in my spare time between jobs, and somehow managed to complete two works.

One of them didn’t make it to the printing stage in time, so it ended up being a digital piece titled “Shishi-Kenbu”, inspired by the traditional Japanese lion dance Shishimai.

The other piece is titled “Taiki”. I took a model I had been working on previously, refined it, and turned it into a fully realized physical sculpture.

I’ve been keeping a kind of diary documenting the creation process of these two works, and I’d like to start sharing it with you from the next update.

See you next time!