Syd Dabady, Illustration, 2025
Syd Dabady is a Haitian-American illustrator and designer from Miami, Florida. She is currently a senior pursuing a BFA in Illustration at Maryland Institute College of Art. She specializes in fabricating dreamy surreal environments, meticulous rendering, and creating a bridge between the imagined and the tangible, in an effort to encourage more wonder and play in all of our lives.
Skill Building
A series of technical exercises build and demonstrate skills in Rhino, laser cutting, 3D printing, and CNC routing.
Rhino
Laser Cutting
CNC Routing
Project I: Bübaa’s Light
I aimed to create a lamp that would be small enough to sit upon a desk, almost as if Bübaa is a little whimsical companion, as that is how I envision her. I altered her design to make her eyes stars and create extra decorational holes for more light to peak through from the front. I put in a color changing LED bulb to shine through the back of her spiral.
Process
I started this project by sketching out some ideas. I knew I wanted to create a lamp based on a form/character I reference in my illustration work heavily, thus Bübaa’s Light was born.
Project II: Key to The Essential
Many things went wrong with this sculpture…but my goal was to have everyday objects interact with each other in an unexpected way. I enjoy working with key imagery, and I wanted to create a piece that references something necessary but not thought of as “special” like medication. The word and object has an almost negative connotation sometimes, since we don’t wish to rely on it, paired with something that holds a lot of symbolism for me albeit still quite a “unremarkable” object to most, like a modern key.
Process
I first went in with my calipers and wrote down every single measurement and dimension i could. I created a profile curve then revolved it. I used my object copy as a base for my project, so I then went in and modeled a keyhole/slot for keys I laser cut out of pink acrylic. I sketched the idea for the sculpture the worked in Rhino to design the pieces.
Project III: Xmas Tree
Beautiful, Awesome, Amazing, Grueling, Challenging, Anger-Inducing, DFab Christmas Tree!
Process
For this project, I helped work on some initial branch designs in rhino, finalized the top branches, and worked on camming for all the sheets. I helped do initial sanding of all non-branch pieces, and helped more on the rhino/ camming side when needed + revisions as well as operated the CNC throughout the project, mainly for the last printed sheets and lastly, helped with assembly.
Research
More Information
Check out more of my work here!
*All of my files are in Picasso, many of which I did not remember to save to my personal device to be uploaded </3…