Most of us know Oakley because the model of sun shades favored by frat boys rushing round locations like Lake Havasu whereas on spring break. However Oakley has been a bit extra adventurous than that at occasions. Again in 2002, Oakley launched their legendary “Medusa” headgear, which regarded just like the type of factor you would think about seeing at a Burning Man pageant within the Mad Max universe. At present, mint examples of Medusa headgear, with goggles, go for hundreds of {dollars}. Briefly, it has a following and Oakley wished to money in on that legacy, so they commissioned Zibartas to create a contemporary Medusa.
The unique Medusa was each daring and distinctive. It consisted of a leather-based cranium cap with built-in goggles and dreadlock-like ornamental ornamentation. Whereas that design was futuristic in 2002, it feels very a lot “of the time” at the moment, like sporting a trench coat within the years following the discharge of The Matrix. The problem given to Zibartas by Oakley was to reimagine Medusa for at the moment’s avant-garde fashionistas—a brand new technology that appears to seek out early 2000s trend very intriguing.
That was a tall order, as a result of the brand new Medusa wanted to each embrace its legacy and do one thing new. Fortunately, Zibartas had some inspiration. It seems that Oakley has a media division and so they produce one thing known as Future Genesis, which is a universe of content material that features comics and animated movies. In a kind of movies, we see a brand new model of Medusa and Zibartas was in a position to make use of that because the reference for the venture.
The brand new Medusa headgear resembles the unique in kind, however with a number of distinct modifications. The obvious is that the “dreadlocks” are glowing tubes as an alternative of inert leather-based. The supplies are additionally completely different, with extra variation in texture. It nonetheless screams “Medusa” to everybody within the know, however is exclusive sufficient to face aside.
The video Zibartas uploaded focuses on the fabrication of the brand new Medusa headgear. Utilizing largely 3D printing and laser chopping, with the assistance of some fashions supplied by Oakley (although with lots of hours of customized work), Zibartas was in a position to assemble the shape. That was, frankly, a ridiculous quantity of labor and it required lots of sanding and portray by hand. However the completed components look wonderful and also you’d by no means assume this was a one-off handmade prototype.
The goggles match onto the headgear utilizing magnets, as do the LED tube dreadlocks. Zibartas even made standalone frames for the goggles, to allow them to be worn on their very own like sun shades. The sunshine comes from individually addressable WS2812B RGB LED strips, however Zibartas doesn’t present any element on the {hardware} used to regulate them. We do, nonetheless, know that the person can regulate the LED results by way of a smartphone app, so there’s a good probability Zibartas used one thing like an ESP32 growth board.
The result’s fairly unbelievable, in essentially the most literal sense of the world. It seems futuristic, whereas concurrently nailing the aesthetic of the unique Medusa from 20 years in the past. We aren’t certain what Oakley will do with it, however we wouldn’t be shocked to see it present up at some promotional occasion for his or her Future Genesis media.
