Materializing Monsters [1]

Finally. The day has come. The monsters from my mind become real.
lucius attempt 1

So, this is one of the projects that found their secret beginning last year. Together with my brother I preordered a 3D printer some months ago and after the release it was finally sent to us <3

printer

Therefore I learned how to do 3D-art last year. The 3D printer arrived yesterday & I did the first test print with a simple dragon bust I made last year ( I named the dragon Lucius :D).
As I messed up some numbers, the print is half as large as it should be, haha. I’ll reprint it in the (hopefully) right size and then paint it. (still, the tiny print is quite cute and I love it!) The new print will also have the highest possible resolution (the one here has a pretty bad one, because we wanted to have the first result as fast as possible :D)
I have some very awesome stuff planned for the future and look so forward to continue my journey of 3D-art & 3D-printing. I know I’m just starting and have A LOT to learn, but I’m already super excited and am happy that it is a journey that I can do together with my older brother.

From now on I’ll share some steps and most creations with you here. Stay tuned!

10 Comments

  1. That’s already a good job of modelling for a “simple dragon bust” x)

    What I love with 3d printing is that it mix 3d and modelling, I used to do a lot of these back in the past (not any more because I don’t have enough room to store finished models).
    I don’t know what experience you have in plastic painting of 3d pieces and how much it’s different from the painting you used to do (but I think that’s different on some point), so I’m not going to annoy you with that, but you can ask if you want =)
    Same with technical details, for example to have smooth surface, I don’t want to be pontificating, but you can ask if you want info^^
    Btw I would be interested to have more technical info, like the plastic used (well, I’m nearly sure it’s PLA, but just to be totally sure x)) and parameters stuff like fill density.

    (I’ve always thought you were older than your brother oO x))

    1. Author

      Thank you very much c: but it really wasn’t that much work – ~1h x)

      Absolutely! You also made dragon busts :D? (if yes, you need to show me pictures x3)
      It’s completely different, yes! But I got used to it way faster than expected. Still, I’m quite far away from mastering the 3D-program xD
      I’m interested to hear about a smooth surface – well, the surface of the prints with the highest resolution are already much smoother than this one here, but still not 100%. So any ideas on how to get it completely smooth (if that’s actually possible)?

      all technical infos will come once the tests with Lucius are done (so probably saturday or sunday) – and yes, we use PLA 😀 it’s a great material. Didn’t expect it to be THAT robust. Even the thin spikes and horns are very, very hard to break (so perfect for shipping them somewhen in the future :D)

      (wait, what? really?? XDDDD I better not tell him that, hahahahaha. No no, I’m the younger one. He’s ~2 years older than me – born in ’94, while I’m born ’96)

    1. Author

      mean website x.x but everything should be fine now again – also was able to fix the bugs I experienced @.@

      aaah, good you made a screenshot!

      Yeah, already thought that the printer itself wouldn’t be able to make the surface completely smooth. But, when painting them, I noticed that the (thick) paint itself makes the surface a lot smoother and the texture actually doesn’t look bad on the dragons. Especially on the head – it increases the impression of scales. (I’ll see if I can get a good photo of it and send it to you on Skype)

      Yes, ABS would be possible too. Also PET, Nylon, etc etc etc

      Mhm, I’m aware of the downsides of PLA – but as I don’t plan an exterior use it should be fine.
      (it’s a good idea though to add warnings once I sell the prints xD Imagine someone puts his dragon in some hotter place and when he comes back there’s just a puddle of liquid plastic, hahahaha)

      1. Well, seems it’s not x)

        Oh yes I want to see it painted, please, please, pleaaase x)
        I wonder how it looks, as you’re very good in painting. Personally, when I was model-making I have always feared the painting part, because I wasn’t good at all at it, especially with paint brushes (once I’ve tested with an airbrush and it was a bit better).

        What’s the max size you can print? Would be fun to print a gigantic dragon x)

        1. Author

          XDD fun fact though: beside you, it works for everybody x) still, if the problems occur again, write me on Skype or Facebook.

          I’ll paint the last one on the weekend, when I’m back at my Atelier in Salzburg + make photos and then I’ll most likely even make another Blog-Post with photos of the painted figures + the technical details of them. If I don’t post the mentioned scale-texture thingy there, then I send it to you 🙂
          I actually always look forward to the painting part the most 😀

          25 x 21 x 21 cm is the max size I can print x) so not really gigantic, but also not too small.

  2. But you also don’t have much people to test (it happens only when I want to post a comment and I usually don’t see other people commenting, beside you and Requiem.

    Can’t wait to see that^^

    That’s big enough to take plenty of time to print x) . last time I printed a big piece it took 13 hours, when it arrive at eleven I was like thinking hard “please don’t fail now” XD

    1. Author

      I asked some friends to write “test”-comments and tell me if it works for them. And it did. Maybe because they all were from Austria/Germany? Not sure why it doesn’t work for you sometimes. Could it be country-related? Or just random bugs? Not sure… D:

      ^-^

      Yeah. The last print took 17hours (Lucius with a heigth of 7,5 cm) – a detailed print with 20cm heigth will probabaly take 7382698264231423524 hours or so… x)

      1. It may be an anti-spam plug-in or something like that who doesn’t like me for some mysterious reasons x)

        What percentage of infill are you using? As you don’t really need very high resistance in your case, you could (if you haven’t yet) cut a lot in the infill (eventually with a slightly thicker outer shell) to reduce printing time.

        1. Author

          Maybe. Currently it’s also weird – the website is loading so slow oO not sure though if that’s only for me or in general.

          We have a fill density of 20% in all prints (and partly supporting elements) – you can read more about that in my latest post c:

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