A few decades ago, I had an imaginary friend. Well, more of an imaginary pet. Well, a weird little toy I grew attached to and projected a personality on. I called him “Shnork”
He was a translucent green rubbery dude with an elephant trunk and buggy eyes. I think I got him out of a friend’s birthday pinata. I made the mistake of packing him in a bag with a pair of scissors sometime in the 3rd grade, which cost him a couple of toes and put a gash in his nose I tried to fix with tape. I still loved him, of course. I made it up to him by letting him perch on my nose for pictures.
I lost him during a house move when I was around 12 or so... or maybe I hid him in my old bedroom when we left, a new friend for whoever lived there next. I don’t remember what made me start looking for any record of him online, but a few months ago I went digging and discovered he was part of a toy line called “Slurfies”, related to a series of “rubber uglies/jigglers”. Primarily sold as little vending machine prizes. I even found one that was close to mine on Ebay- just a different color. So of course I had to have him!
With my recent adventures in 3d printing, I wanted to use him in a new project, for 3d scanning. He’s got an interesting enough texture that I thought he would make a good transition to 3d modeling, and besides, he’d been my friend for years when I was small, I’d love to grant him a small measure of immortality!
He did make very good practice for my photogrammetry skills. I was able to load my pictures into 3d Zephyr and get a pretty decent result that only needed a little bit of modification. The resulting print is about 1.5x bigger (scaled up for my adult hands and nose) but came out pretty well, I think. Thanks for the inspiration and practice, my friend!