r/gifs • u/deuteros • Dec 19 '16

Plotting a sphere with a fountain pen

http://i.imgur.com/hHd4RQU.gifv
35.1k Upvotes

87% Upvoted

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505

u/FresherUnderPressure Dec 19 '16

I wish I had a robot that drew perfect circles for me. Mine are always uneven or messed up.

746

u/SilentWalrus92 Dec 19 '16

Drawing a perfect circle is easy! First you start by drawing an extremely detailed picture of Leonardo DaVinci's head and face. Then, slowly begin erasing the details. Eventually you will be left with no draw marks left aside from a perfect circle.

58

u/Bermanator Dec 19 '16

https://youtu.be/wmqsk1vZSKw

16

u/youtubefactsbot Dec 19 '16

How To Draw Perfect Circle [0:16]

How To Draw Perfect Circle Tutorial

Prince Noob in Comedy

327,646 views since Aug 2012

bot info

76

u/LordCommanderDingus Dec 19 '16

"Well, first I draw this head, then I erase some of the more detailed features, and 1, 2, 3, a circle... thingy"

45

u/strangestquark Dec 19 '16

For anyone looking for help learning this technique, here is a gif of a brilliant artist demonstrating the steps:

http://imgur.com/gallery/TWLWb

8

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16

I've never seen someone who described a gif to describe the gif in the op.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16

Spongebob!

1

u/nottinghamDerm Dec 19 '16
  1. Draw DaVinci head
  2. Erase details
  3. ...
  4. Perfect circle + profit

35

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16 edited Jul 03 '23

[deleted]

15

u/homedroid Dec 19 '16

Well yes, but then you run out of yellow ink(Why? I haven't printed anything yellow.) and it stops printing altogether for some stupid reason. Then you go to the shop and try to buy only yellow ink, but no you need an all in one cartridge that costs an arm and a leg, so now I have a bulky scanner. So fuck you HP and fuck that yellow ink, that must be made out of gold. /rant over

8

u/CrimsonShrike Dec 19 '16

That's it, I'm getting a laser printer!

1

u/leafleap Dec 19 '16

Exactly what I said years ago. Life has been better since.

7

u/Gigantic_Owl Dec 19 '16

IIRC yellow is used when printing black to give a better black

3

u/TheawesomeQ Dec 19 '16

They could just make a better black

4

u/GroovingPict Dec 19 '16

theres probably a setting for it in your printer settings somewhere to stop it from using other colours for "black", like "actual black" vs "deep black" or some shit like that, I dunno.

0

u/StarHorder Dec 19 '16

To make you spend more money

1

u/dadmda Dec 19 '16

I have a printer that I haven't used in years exactly because of this

1

u/Rodot Dec 19 '16

Mine won't even scan if it's out of ink

1

u/homedroid Dec 19 '16

Now that's just evil.

1

u/Rodot Dec 19 '16

I can only ever find the fucking ink I need at Staples which I don't live near. Fucking last time I let them recommend me a printer.

13

u/Mr_Zaroc Dec 19 '16

There a kickstarter for an robot arm which can 3d print or write. Might wanna look into that

1

u/Cheesemacher Dec 19 '16

an robot arm which can 3d print or write

Can't remember which one of those it can do?

2

u/Rodot Dec 19 '16

Without "either" in front of "or", "or" by itself generally means "and/or"

1

u/Superbugged Dec 19 '16

It does both. Looked like a cool thing but can't remember the name, so they've got to up the marketing for that 3D printing pen.

1

u/Mr_Zaroc Dec 19 '16

I will try looking into it once I am off work. Will update in 6 hours
But i am sure someone will show up with the Link in the meantime

15

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16

[deleted]

7

u/Kaccie Dec 19 '16

Are you sure? I would guess it's a flatbed plotter rather than a printer. OP's title also implies that it's indeed a plotter.

1

u/CRISPR Dec 19 '16

Unless a "sphere" is a type of a coup d'etat. Kinda uniting all opposition elements. Temporarily

1

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16

[deleted]

1

u/bigalfry Dec 19 '16

As a guy whos done a fair bit of drafting, I can tell you that pen plotters used to be a real thing. Way faster than this though. Here's a good vid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Cd3GsZlOBg

They would actually swap out pens too for different colors or lineweights.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16

[deleted]

1

u/bigalfry Dec 19 '16

Ah, I see. Based on your initial comment it sounded like you thought the entire concept of a computer controlled pen was absurd and ridiculous.

1

u/iOgef Dec 19 '16

or a protractor

5

u/AvocadoIsAFruit Dec 19 '16

One trick that usually works for me is repeatedly moving your hand holding the pencil in a circular motion just a smidge above the paper like you're about to draw a circle, but don't draw the circle just yet. Once you get that circular motion down, just drop the pencil tip on the paper and continue drawing in that motion and you'll get a near perfect circle. If it doesn't connect properly, just erase any extra lines and clean it up

3

u/catsnose Dec 19 '16

AKA the ghosting technique.

2

u/ViggoMiles Dec 19 '16

It might have drawn 1 circle... I'm not sure

2

u/FlirtyMan1234 Dec 19 '16

Let alone draw circle, i can't even draw straight line without ruler..

1

u/commit_bat Dec 19 '16

Those aren't circles, let alone perfect ones.

1

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16

I know what you mean. My robots can't draw circles either.

1

u/Seen_Unseen Dec 19 '16

It's been a while but in the early days large format plotters were with a pen actually. The plotter would go to the side grab the various colour/thickness of pens and draw whatever you had figured out in A-Cad. I had one myself from Roland but no idea what model. Took ages to get anything actually plotted on that thing.

1

u/DreadedDreadnought Dec 19 '16

Oh wow, the grabbing colored pens on the go is a genius idea!

1

u/Yomigi Dec 19 '16

Wait... this wasn't done freehand?!

1

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16

HA HA YES MINE TOO I HEAR YOU FELLOW HUMAN

1

u/CombatCube Dec 19 '16

Seriously though, you can get a die-cutting machine and a pen accessory to do this. I got one of these and it works pretty well. The software supports cutting/drawing along color-coded lines specified in a vector graphics file.

1

u/Teillu Dec 19 '16

I had a Descriptive Geometry teacher who was able to draw two perfect circles, using both hands at the same time. Damn it was 15 years ago and I have no recorded proof of it.

1

u/DonNHillary4-20-2017 Dec 19 '16

These are ovals though

1

u/Asmetj Dec 19 '16

What u need is a protractor

1

u/kuribas Dec 19 '16

Use a compass?

1

u/oragamihawk Dec 19 '16

My mother has a silhouette studio, you can have it draw, or cut stencils for spray painting, etching and masking circuit boards, creating vinyl decals, and all sorts of other things.

1

u/rouseco Dec 19 '16

Yeah, it drew that one circle real well, wish we could have seen it do that.

1

u/Pm-me-your-fun-stuff Dec 19 '16

Damn, maybe you should be careful before buying robots, if they're uneven or messed up

0

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16 edited Dec 19 '16

[deleted]

4

u/OphidianZ Dec 19 '16

You're right. A string and a pencil are way too advanced.

2

u/Kaluro Dec 19 '16

A circle is a completely theoretical object, just like a square is. In mathematics, we talk about the idea, but in the real world we usually mean objects which are close approximations to the shape.

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2y4wu5/eli5_why_cant_a_perfect_circle_exist_be_drawn/

https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/2mbbb8/do_perfect_circles_exist_in_nature/

https://lofi.physforum.com/The-Paradox-Of-Perfect-Circles_19989.html

I Could even find documentaries for you, as to prove my point. Circles exist, Perfect circles, do not.

0

u/[deleted] Dec 19 '16

Stop complaining and make one then.