After many years, a return!

So, I quit posting ~4 years ago, partly due to the adoption I mentioned several posts ago actually coming through, and the new addition to the family has (probably understandably) kept me very busy.

Several times along the way, I’ve considered coming back, and then realized that I’d lost LiveWriter, and I didn’t want to deal with the hassle without it, so I kept putting it off.

However, as of today, LiveWriter has returned to Windows 10, as Open LiveWriter!

So, if all goes well, I may start posting again!

Geocoin Designs: Voyage of Exploration–Sea

So, this coin is the first design we got to the point of being ready to submit it to a mint, and we always planned on it being the first in a series of 4. This was probably a bit ambitious for our first coin, though in the end we managed to have it work out well.

When we originally conceived of this design, we started with the basic outline for the back, and wanted to build on that. As this was the first design we’d done, we spent quite a bit of energy analyzing every step we took, and double-checking everything. In hindsight, this was probably the best thing we did with this coin, as it helped ensure that we identified the design features that we wanted to carry through the whole series. We also learned a lot as the design progressed through the blueprint stages, so that later designs could be (and were) easier and smoother to produce.

Here is the original concept art for this coin (and the series) as it was first shown to manufacturers:

I’ve placed the “back” or “compass” side first above, because that is the common design between all 4 coins, and the inspiration for the whole concept.

The complexity of the metal work we wanted was such that we did a ‘metal map’ version of the artwork to help ensure that there was no confusion.

 

From there, the Mint produced a first round of blueprints, and we went through several iterations (around 10)  to get the metalwork blueprint to something we liked. This included a bit of negotiation and compromise as we learned what the limitations of manufacturing were for some of the detail.  The final metalwork blueprint looked like:

 

Now came the fun of deciding on metal and enamel color combinations to produce the different editions! We originally designed 6 of them, and had them sampled. After the samples came in, we ended up designing a 7th edition. The way we went about this is to take the metal blueprint above, and start doing color-fills to approximate what we expected it to look like.  Here’s the initial color map for just the regular edition:

Again, we went through several iterations (and modifications) to get to:

You’ll note that the final version has a significantly smaller number of transparent colors, due to the transparents not being as stable during 'baking’, especially in fine details the more there are.

Finally, all editions were produced, and they look like this:

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Warm Seas – Gold:

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Warm Seas – Nickel:

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Warm Seas – Antique Gold:

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Warm Seas – Antique Silver:

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Dawn – Antique Bronze:

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Sunset – Copper (Artist Edition):

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Midnight – Black Nickel (Artist Edition):

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So, that’s the first coin in the Voyage of Exploration series. We had several other designs in the pipeline  while we were working on this one, watch for those to show up here!

Geocoin Designs: A Retrospective

So, one of the big projects over the last year was working with Mitch (Nepo Kama) to put together and release quite a few different Geocoin designs in a wide variety of editions, through several manufacturers. Over the next little while,  I’ll share some of those and the stories that go with them. I won’t promise them all in any specific order, and I’ll warn you now that they are likely to be interspersed with other musings and catch up for the last year.  

The designs that may be covered include:

• Voyage of Exploration Series (Sea, Land, Air and Space)
• Dragon Tails
• Spring time and Summer time
• Road’s End
• Sun Rose

That ends up being 9 coins coming out to over 50 different editions all together, so this may take a little while!

Wow. It’s been a while….

I was looking around and realized I hadn’t posted to this location in quite a while!

1. Yes, I’m still geocaching, though I haven’t yet since the first of the year
2. Yes, I’m still collecting Geocoins
3. Yes, I’m still helping design Geocoins
4. No, I haven’t made progress on the smarthome conversion lately.
5. Yes, I have another ‘new’ project taking time

Looking around, I see that I’ve really not posted much of the art for the geocoins I’ve helped design. I’ll have to do that in the near future here.

But the big project of late? We’ve been working to put together the application to start the process of adoption, and that has been our primary focus for several months now. I’ll have to spend some time over the next few days doing more targetted posts on each of these, but this is your ‘quick’ update.

 

-Mike

PS: I just realized. It’s been over a year since I posted here. I have a lot more to catch up on than I thought!

Ok, I need to have a few photos easy to find, and this is a convenient location..

For various reasons, I need a few photos up where I can show them to several people as examples of things that can be done with Geocoins. So, you all get to see them here!

I’ll probably be updating this post several times, to keep everything in one place.

So, to start with, we’ll examine what can be done with “2d” coins.

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Butterfly 2o1o (Tie Die)

This coin is a great example of multi-level 2D under translucent (hard) enamel. The right-hand picture only uses 2 colors of enamel, yet because of the multiple depths appears to have far more.  The left picture only has 5 colors of enamel. I believe this is 4-level coin on each side, 3 recessed and then the raised/exposed metal.

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Eat, Sleep, Cache (Blue front)

This is another multilevel under hard enamel, this time with both translucent and opaque enamels. In this case, the under-enamel raised details are used to add shadows in the lake, and detail to the sun, along with implying some depth. 

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Digital Hell (Copper with Green)

This coin is hard to get good pictures of with the really shiny copper, so I’m using a few I found around the web. In this case, the enamel used is soft but also translucent.

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MindBender (Coinclub)

This coin is particularly interesting because it uses a combination of 2D and 3D techniques, and a combination of both soft and hard enamels. 

 

-- More to Come --

We went for a drive yesterday, and saw this…

I took this picture from a viewpoint as we went around the east side of Rainier yesterday. That is “White River” down below.

Wow. I guess things have been busy…

So, a lot has happened in my geocoin/geocaching stuff since I last posted, and as of today, I’m officially starting the countdown until GeoWoodstock VIII in Carnation on the 3rd of July!

I haven’t hit very many caches recently, because I’ve been so busy, but I’ve added a few coins, including this month’s club coin (which, once again, my private speculations were WRONG).

So, here’s some of what has arrived:

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GCC May 2010 “10 years of giving back” (Title is a guess)

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 Elements Compass – Sun

For this one, I actually picked it up in 3 finishes, Shiny Silver, Shiny Gold, and Antique Gold. The pictures above are the Shiny Gold. There are some differences in the Antique coins, here’s a shot of the back of the Antique Gold as an example:

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 Davy Jones Locker

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I also have ordered an interesting set that I’m looking forward too, titled the “Axial Intervals” set.  It should be here later this week.

Axial Intervals: Winter, Spring Summer and Fall respectively (fronts)

And for the backs:

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