Blender file of 3D print

I decided that I wanted to try the 3D printing thing so I downloaded Blender made a duplicate (tried) of my original head and got it printed up at Shapeways.com. It turned out pretty well for my first 3D face. I printed the same head in two different materials: White Strong & Flexible (WSF) and White Detail (WD).







WSF and a badly poured plaster original sculpt head on a stick.















White Detail verse White Strong Flexible.


WD is actually slightly translucent and smooth feels almost waxy. WSF looks and feels like fine sugar, you would need to sand it to get it smooth.





As far as the sculpt goes - I put too much detail in the face with the cheek bones and mouth area and frankly it ages him 10 to 20 years. The eyes ended up being too wide as well.







The next run I will subtract the round eyeballs from the mask and try to get my main mouth shapes I worked on for lipsyncing.
I'm not sure which one I will use. I'll test painting before I decide.
The costs are:
White Strong & Flexible $11
White Detail $18.29
These are Shapeway prices for my masks which are about 3/32" thick, but vary up to 3/16" at the forehead. The materials are also Shapeways names.
Fun stuff!

Change in plan

I decided to change the way I will animate my characters head. I was all gung ho about the silicon mask and poured one to test the concept. At first (this was back in Nov 08) I was happy - it looked great, there was an issue with bubbles, but looked good. Then I tested eyebrow movement and the whole eye moved including the eye shape deforming. So now I'm back to using replacement faces. Frankly it doesn't hurt that Coraline pulled it off fantastically. For now I'm sculpting mine by hand, but the 3D printer idea looks totally fun and well, helpful.

Behind the scenes

Thought I would put up some behind the scenes shots.

Christian my main character showing off the camera sled. The camera screws in from the bottom.


Sled in action

This photo is the day after the last shot on my final assignment. The tinfoil wrapped light is my spot light that I lit his face with. I had a board above the camera that bounced the light from the black spots above too. The big arts and crafts light was off during filming.

I've been working for the last few months as if I was taking a class on animation. I made a syllabus with 5 assignments and the last one was to be at least a 30 second long video.

Below is that Video which includes a lip sync test (assignment #4).

Larger Youtube video here.

Character sheet is below: