Diorama Delight For Minecraft Minor

The most rewarding moment of the holidays has turned into an ongoing project for my entire extended family. Pop wants skylines. Uncles and Cousins want custom headquarters and armories. Everybody has an idea and a vision for a line of printed projects.

When I gave my young nephew his first three dimensional printer, I never thought the buildings that I had printed (and professionally painted and detailed) would inspire the other members of my family to purchase one for each of their households. Their hobbies of model trains and tabletop gaming were perfect as a selling point for the machines themselves; adding design and construction to their budding building hobbies.

Or, to quote my nephew: “Like getting to bring your minecraft world to real life objects.”

Present and Presents

And in that region known as America’s capital city there were suburbanites spread soar about Interstate 95 in Atlantic Seaboard North to South, printing in their fields, keeping watch over their fused filament fabrication as an industry shrouded, like night. And, tho the death angel of the killer 3D gun hang’d upon them, and so ready for the deluge of regulation, terror and fear and sore and whatnot,  then the White House 3D Printed Ornament Challenge announced their winners, and the glory of the government shone round them, and the GS-#angel of digital replication said unto them “Wait’ll you see our NASA project successes with Zero-Gravity printers. You’re gonna love the potential for self replication machines built from asteroids in a beautiful win-win for humanity.”

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/12/03/announcing-winners-first-ever-white-house-3d-printed-ornament-challenge

Along with those firsts (and a few more actually, the link glows with 3D techno-goals), I’d be happy to see in the aftermath of the holiday season just how much cultural awareness and identity the rapid prototyping industry will gain. Each day, a major company or educational institution has, it seems, released yet another object created “almost entirely of 3d printed parts”. From cars to drones, these leaps in production truly foster the truest dream of achievable equality through increased supply of various machines. Nostalgia and that wicked “holiday spirit” can only add to the desire for the random hobbyist to begin their own personal project: designers, engineers, scientists and artists all will take some time this year to seek out the goodies they would want gift wrapped with their name on it. Surely, in a time of year celebrated often with the act of gifting, what better companion than a mythical elven ephemera maker is there? Buying someone a 3D printer is a gift that will not fail to keep on giving; and early adopters have this chance to tune in the children of humanity into production mode, with their own starter kits.

Of course, all I want at this time of year is to know that a child who just learned to walk could see, sometime in their adulthood, the first holiday season of home appliance grade replicators to grace the world; and the first new year’s day recycled confetti PLA.

Art for Print’s Sake

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts recently opened their Forbidden City exhibit ( http://vmfa.museum/exhibitions/exhibitions/forbidden-city/ ), which has mounted a full-scale model of the Palace Museum grounds in China as a dominant artifact. Replacing an artist’s credit with the LeapFrog corporate logo wasn’t the only odd unsettling fact: upon closer examination the buildings themselves revealed small-scale malformed layers of “extruder striation” and hanging plastic string representing a lack of finishing processes to the average viewer and a chin scratch for the 3D hobbyist.

While the VMFA is currently displaying Leapfrog’s Creatr Dual Extruder for their doppelganger model, touching on the technology and making it available for viewer consumption, it does not take the opportunity to touch upon a key subject in the evolution of 3D printing’s utilitarian household hierarchy: are 3D printed objects to be considered art?

3D printing has always benefitted with the ability to personalize an object, but design originality has immediately been eclipsed by the convenience of the “replication factor”. Scanners have matched the racing ascent of 3D printing technology with the ability to replace an object with a lightweight clone that feels everyday enough to be useful as an appliance, yet futuristic enough to be out of simple intellectual grasp. The infancy of these technologies, priced at a household level of affordability, also keeps the simple process of turning to a big data aggregate complicated enough to inspire innovation through necessity.

Thingiverse, GrabCAD, Shapeways Shop and others offer an archive of available 3D files as close to “click and print” as it gets, in the design process at least. These modern readymades allow for individualized interpretation of already made objects, layering touches of time, if not outright specificity of signature stylistic swooshes, to whim. As these communities prosper in their userbase populations (with the human need for credit from finance to creation), so the hierarchy of good ideas builds upon itself, with the rising “cream” seperating from the crop.  Asher Nahmias aka Dizingof is the classic story of the potential for a person’s creative product to carry viral capability, requiring it to be reigned in from open source availability in the era of on demand without supply limits. Of course, just because you have a Dizingof file doesn’t mean you can recreate, or rather, replicate, with your personal machine and materials; there are so many available variables in the world of 3D printing, and the innovation isn’t making uniformity any sooner (luckily).

Shemer Art Center, in Arizona, is currently displaying an entirely 3D printed, objet d’art, show with Materialize ( http://www.shemerartcenter.org/programming/upcoming-exhibitions/ ) that ends November 27th of this year. The open ended thesis and process suggests that artists of note were invited to utilize these tool for their own personal exploration. Included in the community conversation of 3D printing will be a lecture by Max Chandler on “Generative Art”, November 20th, surely a mouth watering informational tidbit of language attempting to grasp FFF, FDM, DLP, SLS and the other acronyms of the 3D Printed Parade into a tighter classification. My favorite quote from the site is that through working with this technology “…Artists have found that it presents exciting opportunities to explore the 3D dimension.”

Kevin Caron’s “Simple Planes with Aquamarine Stripe” occupies a central position in “Materialize” with the luxury of object size (“Planes” used a Gigante 3D printer from Cerebus 3D which allows for the Z axis height of 36”) and storytime serendipity. Caron explains that “This sculpture is a great example of the unanticipated nuances of this technology. Halfway through the print, a mysterious line appeared, hence the sculpture’s name. Rather than ruining the artwork, the aberration adds immeasurably to its beauty and mystery.”

The happy accidents of creation often transcend the status of the common piece into that of the valued object, but is the value an indicator of originality? Is it enough to have an operator or the Duchampian “hand of the artist”, and who says who is qualified? Will future artisans need to distinguish themselves with the creation and engineering of their own tools and the materials required for them before mastering the crafts made by them? (see: Thomas Thwaites)
And while there are few debated points to this ponderous printing problem, Caron’s quotable is certain of the artistic merit of 3D printing: “There’s no question in my mind. This technology is merely a tool. Anyone who thinks it involves merely pushing a button deserves to learn more.” Although, I find Harry S. Truman voice of reason truism far, far better: “It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t care who gets the credit.”

3D Printed Space Suits Up, Justin Bailey ——- ——–

Representational accuracy haunted the merchandising of many a franchise during my lifetime.

Often an artist’s style was duplicated as faithfully as possible, perhaps with a little thickening of the form to accommodate articulate limb movement within the action figure market, and the limits of facial features at intricacy. Sometimes the toys and board games and so forth held an extra air of forgery in the odd art style or the limited manufacturing capabilities; and sometimes the bootleg product did not stick to simply mirroring an idea but recreating it entirely for a new yet old trope: TMNT to Street Sharks to Biker Mice from Mars or the Power Rangers identity crisis.

Even over in Doswell, Kings Dominion’s ancient depictions of Hanna-Barbera cartoons hold a stylistic choice with them that represents their time period before all else, from the seventies opening to the 90s franchise reboots before Paramount would supplant Viacom’s Nickelodeon stable of merchandise. Plastic eye style and plush fur limits on toys, even with the costumed suits that were human controlled puppet figures there are the limits and access to accurate representation with material and detailed possibilities from flat small two dimensional screen to walking down the theme parkway, or keeping the idea of the 1980s in the Days of Thunder ride.

So imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon this hallowinner (Check user name ~talaaya on wordpress or the url: talaaya.wordpress.com/) who spent a few seasons in the creation of this jaw dropping representation of the most accurate Samus Aran is Justin Bailey cosplay that I have ever seen; rather this costume, the Varia Suit from Nintendo’s Metroid series is an exact replica of an imaginary character come to life (minus the green hair) .

The model mimics the classic form of the character referencing Sigourney Weaver’s dramatic turn in the Alien series, the first notable female character in a video game, and certainly the earliest female playable protagonist in one. Talaaya spent weeks on models and modeling the suit in Maya and ZBrush and using post processing techniques after printing the plastic pieces including sanding, priming, painting and coating the pieces. The process cost upwards of 5,000 dollars in material, and thirty three months from concept to finish.

To imagine that all of this could’ve been done with one three dimensional printer gives a the flame for creation to a number of dedicated artists and designers to delight in the primitive joys of pretend and dress-up, in this current holiday season of costume balls and gowns.

Third Surface

Business is what happens when you’re busy making other plans

I can’t believe in a single business plan for a three dimensional printing company. Against the very nature of a three dimensional printer’s possibilities is the strenuous constraint of the listed instruction. Thinking outside the box has always been considered, to me anyway, keeping away from a to-do list.

First, second, third, and done.

The printed world is all about the possibilities of creation, and the best part of creation keeps it as limitless as your imagination. Three dimensional printing serving smaller businesses, without the resources for a devoted design and engineering staff to maintain and optimize the use this technology, is an undertaking within itself. To section off and identify a market or client base serves to limit experiences afforded by the traditional storefront community business; the experience of achievement, the production of solution.

As 3D printing becomes an appliance, and micro-fabrication a common sight, there will be an opportunity for market specialization. For the present moment, however, those of us riding the crest of printing plastics should serve to satisfy the curiosity of the community. Infinity should stretch before in a vast breath of possibility to ignite those around us, like so many incendiary devices, to catch and show the light to the world.

Test Post, Dont Ignore