#3dprintcup

[cheungygirl]

3DPrintCup - Tengu-san

Something I worked on recently :) read more about it here and here

[michaelsnowdon]

TENGU-SAN - 3DPRINTCUP - Here's a video documenting my 1st involvement with 3D Printing and having one of my designs made flesh. Plastic... flesh.

[michaelsnowdon]

Tengu-san - Check out our feathered friend in his Augmented Glory!

[jamiepcarr]

Snagglechomp Becomes Snagglechamp

Tonight was the big night for me and my little dinosaur model. Earlier in the day, I applied another layer of bump texturing to the base and finally decided to call it completed. The entire painting process probably took about two hours' elapsed time -- most of the time spent was on waiting for the layers of paint to completely dry.

Here is how he looks, basically. I find the paint job has a lot better subtlety to it in person. My phone does not really do it justice.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that he was a popular topic of conversation right away! For much of the evening he remained at the front of the lines of models, and many pictures were taken. Initially folks did not believe me when I explained that I had never painted a model before! His paint job stood out apparently.

Here is his Top Trumps card. I had tried to make him relatively balanced. 30 was the maximum points any one stat could have, so I avoided giving him any 30s. This proved to be a poor tactic however, as just about every other submission was statted up with 30s in mind!

The team name was just something I had thought was required; It's a reference to my e-mail. I alone made the model.

I was utterly floored when my name was announced as the winner for the Best Student Submission category. Even as I write this, I am still pleasantly surprised. I received a lovely solid glass trophy, and a copy of my character's card.

I was very surprised and pleased with the attention my entry received, and I am very happy with the results. Although I did not win the printer, there are noises being made about the competition being held next year, and I will gladly compete again. As an aside, this is the first trophy I have won since I was six and received one for a mini-leagues baseball tournament, and means decidedly much more to me!

Many of the other submissions were wonderful, and I am happy to have taken part. It has been a real learning experience and I met some lovely people along the way, as well. 

The model itself is accompanying the other submissions in a tour around Manchester, and is being photographed professionally, so I will have some properly nice pictures of the model here in future.

Thanks for reading, and onto the next project!

[jamiepcarr]

Just the base left to do now!

[jamiepcarr]

Rough Side and Better Side, Base Coat 1st Layer.

There is not much I can do about the horrific rough side, but I am doing my best! I never use real media paints so this is very new and scary for me.

[jamiepcarr]

The Manifestation of Snagglechomp

I have been engaged in a rather nasty battle against a combination of flu and cold these past few days, and so my ability to create has been more than a little hampered -- unless creating a massive wastebin full of kleenexes is anything to brag about.

Today was exciting however, as it was the day to pick up my printed model. I had been looking forward to seeing Snagglechomp being made into something tangible. The results have taught me a lot.

The feeling of holding something in my hand that had come right from my brain was a new and fun experience. As I held the little model in my hands, I thought back to pulling out those first few Zspheres in the armature stage, and how all that digital faff had culminated in this actual object that weighed something and took up real space. Here he is overseeing my celebratory burrito:

Unfortunately, the little two-fingered hands proved to be a problem at this scale, which I thought they might. The left hand turned out mostly alright, but the right one is completely mangled after very gently prising away most of the support material. It could not be helped, the fingers were just too small to withstand even the small force of having their supports removed. There are two small holes in either side of the depressions in his muzzle. These holes can be sealed with paint or even clear nail varnish before priming, but it is still something to keep in mind.

It is obvious that through necessity of saving material the printers had to scrap the internal pocket that I made and do it themselves, (a favour for which I am grateful.)  Knowledge on how to do this correctly is something I will research and learn in time. The unfortunate side of this is that since I did not do the hollowing out myself, thickening out some of these sensitive areas, like these muzzle depressions, was not under my direct control. I also feel a little guilty for making busywork for someone else.

The teeth are another problem area, as I suspected they might be. How to model them to show up correctly was something that puzzled me, and I just gave my best stab at it. Next time, having seen how these slices of filament work and how thick they are, I think the solution would be to just make the teeth bigger and have fewer. Fortunately the general shapes of the face carried through and he still has his goofy grin.

Because of the way he was printed, one side was absolutely covered in scaffolding material. Unfortunately this has half of him very pitted and scarred with a significant loss of detail, the extent to which is not quite apparent in the picture. I have done my best with a modelling knife for now, but I will need to get some sandpaper to try and file down some of these bits. Acetone was also suggested to me, but I only have one shot at this model and do not want to risk him becoming a blob.

Tomorrow, I am going to ask the people at Games Workshop for some hints at painting on plastic, as realmedia is not my forte. The colourscheme I have chosen for Snagglechomp involves at least one passover with an airbrush or similar, and I hope they have one I can use.

[jamiepcarr]

3DPrintCup

As part of the entry requirements for the 3DCup hosted by CartridgeSave.co.uk, I need to write a little note about who I am, what I do, and why I decided to enter their contest. Truth be told I'd been making noises about making a professional art blog for ages now, so this really gives me an excuse to go ahead and start.

For those who might be looking at this and don't know, the 3DPrintCup is a contest local here in Manchester that's offering up the chance to win a MakerBot Replicator 2x, which is a really awesome piece of kit quite frankly, in exchange for local talent drinking loads of their free beer on offer making some things to print off. A pretty sweet deal really. I don't really drink, but I'll have some of those chicken wings!

My name is Jamie Carr. I came from beautiful western Canada in the heady days of my late teens to live here, in the eternal wall of grey. The original reason that I moved to Manchester didn't work out after a few years, but I met so many lovely people, and got on track with such a great course at Futureworks learning how to move into the 3D medium that I thought I'd stay. I'm enrolled for the degree course at FW this coming September, studying Game Art. I'll be learning how to make assets for games, and hopefully films too one day.

I'm one of those people who voluntarily lives under a little bit of a rock. I'm laid back, I don't drink or party much, and I tend to stay inside with my pet birds and draw -- or I make things in Zbrush and Maya, more recently. I like videogames obviously, given the content of my studies, but I also enjoy tabletop gaming and do that fairly regularly. It's through that I learned about the 3DPrintCup actually; A friend linked it to me with very explicit instructions to win it so that he can make me model and print out everyone's D&D miniatures. What a guy, right?

I need things for my portfolio. I need to be making things to help me learn my craft better. It's more or less what I live for -- and this contest gave me the opportunity to work for a potential reward without needing to stick to any clients' briefings. I figured I'd have some fun and make something with the intention of it to be printed. Experience, experience, experience... It'll also be really neat to hold something in my hand that I thought up from nothing. Something that's unique and right from my own brain. As a child I always wanted to make action figures. With Zbrush and a Makerbot Replicator 2x, I could most definitely do that. Give me the chance and some time, and I bet I could blow McFarlane right out of the water! Haha, what is life for if not to dream, right?

I just clicked 'send' on the final part of my submission a few minutes ago, so my entry is all sorted out and presumably in the queue to being printed.

Here's hoping.

-Jay