Stingray Paperclip Holder

This is a page on a set of two aquatic life office supplies, and while this page focuses specifically on the stingray dish, my partner has uploaded their own page for the fish tape holder. This print is simple and is only one part. My partner's page for the fish tape holder can be found here (Insert link).

Design Prompt

Recent analysis by the Staples finance department has concluded that sales for desktop organization products have declined in recent years.  The company would like to ramp up their profits in this area by enhancing the aesthetic nature of these products.  

Your group of two has been hired to design a set of theme-based organizational products.  Your team will design a set of office supplies that are tied together with a common theme. You must be able to justify the theme that connects the products together.  The idea is that the customer will not want to buy just one; they will want to buy the whole set.

Design Choices

Mapping the body:

Me and my partner decided to plan out a sketch for the body of the stingray on our own, creating a constraint box (12 x 17 cm) and plotting some key points around it. After taking inspiration from some images online, our sketch ended up looking like this.

Depth of the body:

We extruded the body up by 2 cm and after we created a dome off of the face of that extrude that is also 2 cm long. We wanted to recreate the smooth and flat shape the stingray is know for.
 

Creating the bowl shape:

The next step was to create an ANGLED cut off of the face of the original extrude. Here's what the sketch looked like, just use the Offset Entities tool.

Make sure to use the Sketch Fillet tool on the edges of the new sketch as well to create that smooth look. Radius of around 0.25 cm.

Make sure to fillet out the spiky edges that are created by this cut.

Creating the tail:

After, we created a sketch for the tail connected to the original body extrude. This extrude should be 2 cm to match the original extrude as well. Mess around with the radius of the fillet until you can actually see a working preview.

Make sure to fillet out the edges for that smooth look again. Mess around with the radius of the fillet until you can actually see a working preview.

Creating a face (Optional): 

You can sketch a little face on the bottom and cut extrude into the original extrude very slightly (around 0.10 to 0.15 cm).

Changes: 

Originally, our design was going to be a tall cylinder coming out of the back of the stingray, but it wasn't space efficient and it was unnatural.

After a suggestion from the teacher, we decided to go with a more dish-like approach. 

Color:

The color is completely up to you but we found the silky and shiny materials to look great.