Pyschebot, Roll Out!
Kyra Correa
Major: Illustration
Genre/Medium: 3D printed resin, acrylic paint.
About the work: “I’ve an embarrassing confession to make: I really, REALLY enjoy mech media. My first exposure to it was the 2007 Michael Bay “Transformers” movie, which seems to have permanently altered my brain’s chemistry. Over the years, my enjoyment of such titles as “Pacific Rim,” “Neon Genesis Evangelion,” “Gundam,” and more has culminated into this, my love letter to all mechs worldwide. “PsycheBot, Roll Out!” is a fully articulated doll/action figure version of the Psyche satellite, a la “Transformers.” Across her body are almost all of the satellite’s scientific instruments. Her torso is made up of the spacecraft’s bus and features the DSOC transceiver on her lower bust, the twin imagers on her upper left bust, part of the propulsion system on her back, and the solar arrays as wings sprouting from her shoulder blades. She also has boosters on her outer ankles, electrical components on her outer thighs, and the high-gain antenna on her left shoulder. Finally, the booms carrying the magnetometer and gamma ray & neutron spectrometers sit atop her head. Something I enjoy about the boom poles on her head and solar array wings on her back is that they make her look like a butterfly, which references the goddess Psyche!
“PsycheBot, Roll Out!” was a massive challenge and labor of love for me. I wanted a variety of different joints for different parts of the doll because I thought doing only ball joints wouldn’t look right on her sharp robot body, and I also wanted to try out my campus fabrication lab’s fairly new resin printer! However, these two choices meant that I wouldn’t have much prior knowledge to rely on—I’d only ever seen my peers make articulated dolls with wire armatures or exclusively ball joints before, and I was the first person to make a resin print that would require tight fits between parts at Beals, the campus fabrication lab. In addition to all that, I also don’t really 3D model all that often! Despite everything though, I was so in love with the idea of making my very own mech that I went forward with the project. After researching all different kinds of doll joints, doing several fit tests, and dealing with broken parts and printer failures, I finally wound up with my final PsycheBot! After getting her printed and painted, I photographed her exploring the strange world of Earth before the journey to the asteroid Psyche.
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