WoodMarvels Blog

I’ve been spending the better part of the week working on the newest collaboration with David Newman, the guy who released an amazing rocket just a few months ago at WoodMarvels.com. At first, it rendered in a day so I decided to do a second part flying through some clouds… well, taking 45 minutes to render each frame (there are 400) means the product is delayed till sometime next week but in the meantime, here is a screen shot. Due [...]

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 [...]

I’ve been trying to figure out how to design workable tank tracks like this using wood for quite a while using the minimum of pieces… seeing this blew me away! When I first saw this animation, I wasn’t sure if it was made using 3D, stop motion or a combination of the two as you can see the tank tracks don’t seem to have anything keeping them together but there is a little guy driving it. I was REALLY confused [...]

I noticed a nice uptick in traffic this morning and it seems to have originated from a Make (Online) magazine article about the Opportunity Mars Rover I finished and launched just a few days ago. Great! 3D VS Real Kits Make magazine does bring up a very valid point in their short write-up about my company. Why does WoodMarvels.com have computer generated imagery instead of real photographs? 1) Testimonials: I’ve been slowly taking in testimonials from customers who send me [...]

I’m happy to announce the release of our 7th bank, this time, modeled after a television set. What makes this TV Bank standout is that it allows your child to draw a picture on regular paper and insert that into the TV tube… making it THEIR bank! It also features an easy money release mechanism in the back and all that is needed is some glue to keep everything together. As with all things at WoodMarvels.com, it’s built extra tough! [...]

Today I finished up the EPS files and made available the laser cut kit of the WoodMarvels.com Mars Rover Opportunity. An added bonus is that I did this using 3DS Max 2011 which I got just a few days ago… what a dream! Renderings are more than 2x faster and everything is so much smoother compared to the old version 6 I was using which was pushing 7 years old! The EPS files that make up this rover required nine [...]

A few months ago, I had to remove all 4mm kit sizes from WoodMarvels.com due to supply issues, well, those issues are now resolved and they are now available on our site once again! I design everything using 6mm standard thickness material but there can be significant cost savings with 4mm versions of the same product due to the smaller size and weight… which leads to reduced shipping costs! This means that all puzzles are now available once again at [...]

It seems to have taken forever but I’ve finally completed the Mars Rover project after close to two months due to delays and the like. This is by far the most ambitious project I’ve taken on so far, considering that if it’s built using 6mm thick wood, the entire model measures about a meter square! It has several moving parts, from satellite receivers to head/neck and even wheels and a camera arm! Complex… yes… that’s why I’ve released a new [...]

A little over a year ago, I decided to write my first science fiction novel. The entire process from start to finish has taken close to a year and was what lead to the inspiration behind the WoodMarvels.com Zulu Main Battle Tank and Rusk Fortress. Where’s the physical form? Well, just as I was about to release 2847 A.D.: Solar Horizons, BookSurge (an Amazon company) merged with CreateSpace (another Amazon company) and as a result, the procedures involved with approving [...]

With my laptop going down for a month and my Mars Rover taking-up a heck of a lot of time, I haven’t been able to release that many new things over the past two months at WoodMarvels.com. The Mars Rover is rendering nicely now and should be ready for release in probably two weeks. So what happened over the past two months? Testimonials from a few very happy customer such as Stephane’s Mobile Crane, Full Armor Gear Transporter and twin [...]