EXLICON is a drawing tool for people who are serious about drawing circles and ellipses.
This product is made by Ddiin (Instagram), a company from Hong Kong founded by independent product designer Sofia Lee. At the time of this review, EXLICON will be live on Kickstarter to raise funds for its production.
This review is made possible thanks to the sample provided for testing. I was actually quite intimidated by the design of the product because it looked kinda complicated but the usage is actually simple once you know how it works. Learning curve is not that high.
These are the items included in the box.
I'm not sure if the items will be sold separately. Anyway, it's better to get the whole set for the complete drawing experience.
There are instructions provided to teach you how to use the tool. There are also many golden ratio measurements included.
You can click the two images for a larger view.
The main drawing tool is a small thick disc that measures 5cm (diameter) and 7mm (thickness). It's said to be made of some magnetic metal and aerospace grade aluminium, in other words, the build quality is excellent. The finishing, label and cutting are all precise and has the look and feel of a professional tool.
On the thick disc are markings for degrees that allow you to measure angles, there are also some symbols placed near the edge to help you draw stars (5 sided design) and hexagons.
The shiny flat side of the circumference is magnetic and can attach to the other parts to extend the diameter for drawing.
This is the small magnetic extension that can attach to the thick disc. There are markings labeled in cm and inches.
This is the bigger magnetic extension that also has many markings on it, and also holes cut out for drawing (small) arcs.
These two magnetic extensions can be joined/slotted together to form a much longer drawing tool to draw huge circles or ellipses.
On the back of the thick disc is double-sided tape to stick to the paper to prevent it from moving when you're drawing.
Because the tape is sticky and may damage your paper, you have to make it less sticky, maybe by sticking it to cloth for example, before you use it. Replacement double-sided tape is provided.
To draw a circle, you simply attach the small ruler-like extension magnetically to the side of the thick disc, then draw. The magnetic extension glides very smoothly in a circle.
The holes on the extension are small so only mechanical pencils, fineliners and needle-point pens can fit.
To draw smaller circles, you have to use the flat disc. There's a paper envelope provided for the disc. Dimensions of the flat disc is similar to the thick disc so you can actually just stick the flat disc onto the sticky tape and do away with the envelope.
The flat disc has lots of holes on it. The small holes let you draw dots so that you can connect them to form straight lines. The curved holes allow you to draw small curves so that you can join them to form small circles.
For this drawing, I drew the outer circles with the thick disc, and the smaller circles with the flat disc.
Drawing technical drawings will require patience.
While drawing, I found the tools to be well engineered, well made precisely to help people draw circles and ellipses perfectly.
One application for this tool is to create mandala art and it's so easy to draw intricate designs with it.
To draw ellipses, you have to join the extensions and fit them onto the thick discs.
There are two movable protruding pins on the thick disc for you to slot the holes. The distance between the two pins will determine the type of ellipses you can draw. The variety of ellipses you can draw are more circular than flat. Or maybe I just don't know how to draw really flat ellipses (e.g. car tyres seen from an angle).
While you're drawing ellipses, the two movable pins will move to allow you to draw a beautiful smooth ellipse.
EXLICON is a well designed and engineered drawing tool. The production quality is top notch. This is the tool for drawing circles, ellipses perfectly and for making mandala art. The only downside is you can't draw small ellipses with it.
Head over to the Kickstarter page to find out more details and examples of art you can create with this.
Also check out the company website and Instagram pages at
https://www.ddiin.com
https://www.instagram.com/ddiin_design
As for reliability of the company and the Kickstarter campaign, just check out the comments section for their previous product launch at
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1285153000/magcon-the-most-versatil...
