WoodMarvels Blog

News and happenings within WoodMarvels.com

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  • all

    About two years ago, I got a bunch of things cut and shipped to my parents and nephew for Christmas as their presents. There have been sitting in my computer and finally got around to optimizing the pictures… the Pterodactyl looks the best to me I was abroad at the time (and still am) so I find this is the best way to send things to those I care about. So, as you can see, I’m not just the founder [...]

  • Transport Truck

    David, who also happens to be a contributor who also made the earlier Jet just finished cutting our Transport Truck which looks wonderful. It’s also the first time I see any of my models with paint on them. It looks fantastic! He also made a few slight changes to the model such as replacing the smoke tracks with larger pieces for an easier and safer build for children among a few others. Semi-trailer Truck: How to Build (720HD) F35 Joint [...]

  • jontrain

    A few weeks ago, Ponoko, the company that cuts our laser cut kids approached me to have one of my models at their Makers Fair event in the United States… of course, the first model that came to mind was the Zulu Main Battle Tank. Not only is it massive but really showcases everything that is possible using only 2D wood, complete with rotating and shooting parts! After a few discussions, they settled on the Amazing Train Zulu Main Battle [...]

  • marsrover-opp-anglefront

    Stats are a wonderful thing… and today, they revealed the coolest thing so far in the history of WoodMarvels.com. The guy who actually tells the REAL Mars Rover what to do on Mars actually tweeted about the one for sale at WoodMarvels.com. Fantastic!!! What does Scott Maxwell actually do? He describes it best: At night, there’s a small red light in the sky. On that light lives four hundred pounds of thinking metal sent from Earth. I tell that metal [...]

  • balistesigeweapon-1

    Stephane has send me another testimonial, this time, the WoodMarvels.com Baliste Siege Weapon and it looks amazing! —————- Hello Jon ! How are you ? I join to you a “new” version of the Baliste. Finish in two version, and work great !! I test alone (not with my children ! ) with a standard marble, wonderful ! The second version, I applied some wax color chestnut before cutting, just for make a “laser cutting” inverted ! I think it’s [...]

  • P1030866

    About a week ago, I got a testimonial from Stephane who completed our free Mobile Crane and now he has sent me one for the Full Armor Gear Transporter! What’s even cooler is that he created a really attractive and neat pincer for the Mobile Crane which you can see in the pictures as well (more on that later). Here’s the testimonial! ————————— Hi Jon, The crane (another of the first) will be modified with a self made design of [...]

  • JohnnyCastle

    I got a testimonial from Matthew who ordered both the WoodMarvels.com free Medieval Castle Walls and the EPS file for the Medieval Castle Walls B – using both he created a model that was made uniquely for his child. Below are the pictures and testimonial. This testimonial made me especially proud because a child had a very unique toy built by his father using designs I made… which meant a lot! ——————— (I blurred the kid’s faces in the pictures) [...]

  • Wooden Mobile Crane Picture - turned

    If you look a little on the WoodMarvels.com, you will find that there are a few PDF blueprints that are free – not just my first version of my Medieval Castle Walls. I got an order about a week ago from Stephane which included one such free model, the first version of my Mobile Crane and Stephane was kind enough to send me pictures of the completed model along with a great testimonial of how it went. —————— Sorry for [...]

WoodMarvels.com August 2010 Review

Posted by Jon On September - 1 - 2010 0 Comment
Sydney ANZAC War Monument

I just completed the video stats for the month… over 60 000 video views! Wow! It means that WoodMarvels.com videos have now blew past the 600K mark in total views, I’m sure it’s much higher but I only keep track of a handful of them. From the month of July to the month of August, video growth is north of 111% in TOTAL VIEWS! What’s astonishing is that the summer months are our slowest months… September just hit and now [...]

Sydney ANZAC War Monument: New Project Release!

Posted by Jon On August - 31 - 2010 2 Comments
Sydney ANZAC War Monument

This is the second in a series at WoodMarvels.com – the first will be released in a few weeks regarding the Sydney, Australia area. I saw this building, which I knew nothing about while doing some research and knew the instant I saw it that a laser cut version had to be made available! It took some time, lots of patience but the end result is a pretty accurate representation of the architectural masterpiece, the Sydney ANZAC War Monument. This [...]

CH-47 Chinook Helicopter: HD’ed

Posted by Jon On August - 24 - 2010 0 Comment
CH-47 Chinook Helicopter

WoodMarvels.com has now released an update to it’s original CH-47 Chinook Helicopter 3D assembly animation. The resolutions was bumped up to 720p and that one scene in the mountains is what took a week to render last time around (which had skipping frames) took only 3 days this time around due to a few tweeks. The model, files and kit have all remained the same, a brand new model is rendering right now which I hope to release by the [...]

The joys of week long renders

Posted by Jon On August - 21 - 2010 0 Comment

Since moving to HD production, the rendering times for the animations you see for WoodMarvels.com products has gone up dramatically. What use to take maybe a day or two, now take upwards of a week to simply render. This doesn’t include any modeling or sound/music/post-production… just rendering a 3D animation scene. I had an animation scene (9 seconds worth) finish just a few hours ago, it took 5 days (24 hours a day, for 5 days straight) to render and [...]

Zulu Main Battle Tank: 720HD’ed

Posted by Jon On August - 16 - 2010 0 Comment
Zulu Main Battle Tank

It took a long while but the WoodMarvels.com Zulu Main Battle Tank 720p render finished-up a few hours ago and after some post production work, now available to view online! The model itself hasn’t changed, only the video has been updated. I haven’t released a DXF version of this model due to the crazy number of pieces – imagine using a chisel to cut all the corners out of this model… it would be an incredible amount of work! I [...]

WoodMarvels.com + Vectorealism.com (Milan, Italy)

Posted by Jon On August - 13 - 2010 0 Comment
Vectorealism

Vectorealism is a laser cutting hub that I have access through our partnership with Ponoko to cut my designs, in Milan, Italy. So far, I can get my stuff cut in New Zealand, Germany, United States and thanks to a few friends with laser cutters, quite a few other places which I will announce at a later date. With the launch of their new website in both Italian and English, they used one of our designs on our homepage. The [...]

Formulor.de + WoodMarvels.com (Berlin, Germany)

Posted by Jon On August - 13 - 2010 1 Comment
Formulor

Formulor is a laser cutting hub I have access to in Berlin, Germany through my partnership with Ponoko, which is the main company that I use to cut my physical laser cut kits. WoodMarvels.com was approached a few weeks back by Formulor, who really enjoyed the designs they saw, wanting to use some of them for promotional online banner advertising of their company. After we sorted out a few details, I sent them extremely high resolution renders and their graphics [...]

1956 Porsche Speedste

Now that my initial huge rendering queue that had my laptop hot enough to fry an egg at all hours of the day or night, I’m letting you guys know that the Stereo Bank and Porsche have been updated with new file types and a much improved HD 720p version. The models haven’t changed, only these aspects about them have. Problems with original videos These two animations both had major issues that I wanted to fix. The Porsche had a [...]

1911 Ford Model T Torpedo Runabout

One of my goals for WoodMarvels.com this year was to form partnerships with some well known manufacturers. In this case, it’s ShopBot Tools, a CNC router manufacturer based in the United States with the result being this amazing looking 1911 Ford Model T Torpedo Runabout which I designed but they distributed at the very recent 2010 Detroit Maker Faire (I’ll post press clippings as they are sent to me). In this case, it was being held at the Henry Ford [...]

straddle-carrier

As part of my mission to get things consistent across WoodMarvels.com, I’ve updated and released files for the following models: Abacus, Straddle Carrier and Organizing rack. These are ancient models, the Abacus was the 12th I ever designed actually… hence the use of round wooden dowels. As the files making these models up predated the dinosaurs, it wasn’t any fun bringing them all to date but at least it’s over with. The models themselves haven’t changed, only the animations and [...]