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SLIME

SLIME

Ryo Yonekawa
September 22, 2016
1 Comment

One fateful evening, after a fulfilling day of legs day, my gluteus was screaming the hellish screams of a thousand souls. I wanted to sit in my soft, comfy beanbag chair. But alas, the low height would force me to adopt the life of a wingless bird, begrudgingly rolling around helplessly for all eternity. And then, epiphany. What if legs? Thus, SLIME was born.



All jokes aside, there are few things that contributed to the inspiration of the design. First, I vaguely remember my grandmother having a difficult time getting out of low-height stools. And two, people often shift around in an otherwise ergonomic seat to reach the optimal comfort position. Plus, I think beanbag chairs are great. They're comfy, and you can pretty much sit in any way you want. Style wise, I tried to make it look fun, which is just the design being true to itself. I wanted the harsh, synthetic pleather material to contrast the natural wood for the legs.


There's no real good way to model the intricate creases using traditional CAD softwares such as SolidWorks. I used Sculptris because ZBrush is expensive, and I'm a poor Master student living off of the income from teaching the rambunctious 2nd year students. The legs are made in Blender 3D, because I didn't want to switch over to the Windows side to mess around with SolidWorks. So I just opened up Blender and quickly modelled the legs. It's only to make the render, so dimensions wasn't much of a concern. Oh, I rendered it in KeyShot, by the way.

I've shown it to a circle of friends and couple of strangers, and they were generally either supportive or positive. Some made outrageous claims such as bringing it to market via Kickstarter or Patreon, but I'd rather make one myself before going full-force with it. There are some design issues and kinks that I need to work on to actually build the darned thing, but I think I'm going to enjoy it when I do.

Just do what you like to do, and don't force yourself to fit the image of others. It doesn't matter if people call you uncomfortably casual or off-beat. The world needs people like that, amongst the mass of straight-laced professionals. Even in this day and age, people are still unsure what is right and wrong. So don't follow the norm mindlessly and get off the beaten path. You might find something important along the way.

Ryo Yonekawa

I am Ryo. Self-described designer extraordinaire currently living in Ottawa. I graduated from the School of Industrial Design at Carleton University, and came back to study Master of Design. Currently in first year, and having a blast! My hobbies include turning studios into personal pantries, drinking coffee from a Pyrex measuring cup, and being TA for bunch of rowdy 2nd year design students.

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