Making Puppets with 3D Printing Tech!
- Cogg-In The Works Media
- Apr 21, 2021
- 3 min read
Over the last year a LOT has happened... We've had COVID and the world has been turned upside down! I like many others, lost my job toward the end of 2020 due to the uncertainty of employment stability... To be honest, it's been a bit of a blessing in disguise as it's now given me a reason to get my head down and focus on what matters most to me career-wise... ANIMATION! Yes, animation... In ALL forms! It fascinates me and always has done, but what I love the most is stop-motion animation and making models and puppets ready for action!
Now, to throw a curve-ball into the mix, I have been suffering with an arm injury for the last year or so that's severely affected what I can do, but rather than admit defeat, I've looked at different ways to achieve results!
I've always been someone who has enjoyed doing things in "the old fashioned way", from puppet making, to doodling... I love using physical materials and getting my hands dirty, so to have limited use of my right-arm has been a little depressing.
After designing a character for a my new animated short, I spent a while thinking of how I could get things moving and then I thought about Laika! Yeah, you know Laika!! They made Coraline, Kubo, The Boxtrolls etc. These are stop-motion films that are made so well, they almost look like they've been rendered in CG.
So, that got me thinking more... The heads of some of their puppets are 3D printed!! Now, if only I could get a 3D printer? Well that's easy! They've come right-down in price for a reasonable entry-level machine, not a problem, for me the major learning factor has been the software.
Now, I've tried to dabble with Blender and I haven't got anywhere, I know I should try again at some point, but I just couldn't get on with it and needed to try something quickly to satisfy my needs... So, I looked at Maya after having a brief tinker with 3DS Max in the mid-00's. Admittedly there was and still is a HUGE amount for me to learn, but I found that Maya ticked the boxes for me in terms of usability.
Over a couple of weeks trawling on-line video tutorials and lots of trial and error, I finally had enough in terms of skills to go forward and create my first head sculpt in Maya from my own character design!
Once smoothed and rendered on the PC, I exported this sculpt to an .STL file, then I "SLICED" it in Ultimaker CuraSlice, adding in support trees for the chin, ears, nose and eyes to prevent any dreaded "drooping" whilst printing.
Admittedly, I still haven't got my printer set-up perfectly and I definitely think I need to do more work on my sculpts in Maya, but after 4 hours of printing I was pretty happy with the results going from zero knowledge about a month ago to this... Even if one side of the face seems to be suffering with a bit of over-extrusion, it was easily tidied up with a mix of a very sharp surgical standard scalpel, a Dremel, and super-SUPER-fine sandpaper.
After the print was cleaned up, I then primed it with a few layers from a can of bog-standard modelmakers primer paint.
I decided I didn't want to paint the head with brushes as I'm aiming for a seamless more professional finish, so last weekend I set about borrowing an air-compressor and an air-brush from a buddy, and spent an afternoon learning how to use it for painting.
I started out with a base flesh layer and then added some highlights and rosy-ness to give a bit of depth to the features.
After 24 hours, the head was then ready to have hair flock added... Flocking is a bit like what you had on old-school Action Man's head!
To do this, I carefully placed some small pins into the scalp, covered the required area in a good quality PVA glue, and whilst wet I ran a small electric charge through the pins from a 9V battery, shaking some flock over the glue in the process... The electric current makes the little strands of flock stand on end and then it was left for a few hours to dry.
The final result is below!
This specific head is going to be used as a reference bust whilst I perfect the prints for the actual puppet (I won't need a solid neck as I'll be needing to have something that is animatable) over the next few weeks... Wish me luck!
Try it yourself... It's actually easier than you think if you put your mind to it!
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