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From an idea, comes a product: Milton’s evolution!
19
Apr
Have you ever wondered how Milton became so adorable?!?
Here we will explain the design process behind the creation of the world’s cutest alien that helps with children’s mealtime and particularly, picky eaters!
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Ideation
After researching multiple sources for character design, such as Disney, we learned that proportions were paramount, particularly facial features, when designing a children’s character. We centered our attention around Milton’s mouth because of his insatiable obsession with food and grew his body out from there. After multiple iterations of a large mouthed alien, we found our guy, dubbed the “Fat Chicken.”
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Computer Aided Aliens
Computers sure are powerful, so powerful they can help you realize your dreams! With our backgrounds in industrial design and engineering, we were able to take our sketches and clay models and make them a reality through some powerful software. We won’t bore you with the details, but after many weeks of constant tweaking and adjusting, we had what we thought was a near finished alien. We could not have been more wrong …
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3D Printing!
What a little cutie! This orange fat chicken is our first 3D printed Milton via 3D Hubs. Unfortunately, in order to actually help picky eaters, you can’t fall over from a slight breeze and have a mouth so small you can’t even eat! However, with failure being an integral part of the process, you learn and adjust accordingly. We created so many versions we decided to buy our own 3D printer!
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Silcone Aliens
Another useful skill to acquire in product creation is two-part silicone molding. The process is quite simple and the equipment needed is minimal, unless of course you are trying to make a silicone alien… We 3D printed our mold, mixed, degassed, and poured the silicone, then crossed our fingers. 24 hours later, we had the hockey playing alien above! Again, it took numerous attempts and design changes (it was here we realized just how big his mouth had to get and also where he obtained his now world famous tri-lobe footprint!) There are at least 10 of Milton’s silicone cousins hanging out in the garage.
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“Ahhhhh”
After hundreds of sketches, prototypes, models, molds, hours, tears, laughs, we have our final Milton. We would be remiss if we didn’t mention our incredible (not to mention female owned and operated!) manufacturing partner, Extreme Molding, in Albany, NY, who made it possible to have Milton made in the USA out of 100% food grade silicone.
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Made in NY. Designed in IL.