Sky Pies Process: the Utensils

Aluminum spatulas and hours of sanding: this is how I came to my VR kitchen utensil designs and how I made them.

One of the first steps toward the final idea of controller add-ons, was the idea of a controller in the shape of a pan/skillet. The shape and color followed the controller style language

With wood as the material, the controller had a nice weight to it.

Very soon, I stepped off the idea of making a not-working prototype, to the integration of the already existing VR-controllers into the designs.

Making a lot of quick, tiny drawings without worrying too much about function, helped me to come up with the final designs. The shapes are all loosely inspired by existing kitchen tools or utensils.

To get an idea of what the shapes would do in 3D, I experimented with aluminum foil.

I chose a few other favorites from the drawings, and thought about material options. The black from before seemed a bit too serious and boring to be used for my game, and I wanted to incorporate some color.

Inspired by kitchen utensils with wood and colored plastic combined, I used pink tape and cardboard to see if it would work for my designs.

Having chosen 4 final designs, I started working them out in a 3D CAD program, to be printed later.

It took some trial and error and a lot of prints to get to the right shapes. I found out that it was better to cut the models in half, for better print results.

I also had to make a version without the controller slot, to use in the game itself.

Both the plastic and the wooden parts took many, MANY hours of sanding. The printed pieces had to be filled to get rid of the texture.

Spray filler only was not enough, so I had to use paste. But as it’s very difficult to get an even coating, all the excess filler had to be sanded away. Then after that,

I used the spray filler. After sanding that again, I used a rubber spray to get a nice finish and feel, and on top of that the actual coloring.

I think I legitimately spend 100+ hours on this project on sanding

Finally, I had to decide how the controller utensils might be stored in the house. The game itself can be seen as a digital kitchen, so it made sense to store the utensils similarly to that of a current physical kitchen. The utensils and VR set are easily accessible due to the curve in the wooden rack.