Wednesday, July 11, 2012

From 3D Model to Resin-Cast Doll - Step 3

Deciding what to fix.

I've had my wee man strung for a few days, and have been playing with him to see what I need to alter before taking moulds of him.

I'm happy with how the hips, pelvis, wrists, and ankles are working. I'm very happy about his elbows. This is a joint that I always have problems with when doing a physical sculpt.


Things that are kind-of-bothering-me-but-I-can-live-with (at this scale) are his shoulders and neck. 
See that gap between the top of the shoulder and the trapezius muscle? I'm pretty sure I can fix that by reducing the size of the stringing channel in his armpit. 


His neck is short for a doll, but I was trying to avoid giraffe-neck syndrome. The issue I'm having here is how noticeable the ball joint is when his head is tilted. I won't be altering that because I think it will adversely affect his head mobility (which is nice at the moment). 


Things that I need to fix:
The outer helix of his ears must have been too thin to print, so I'll have to rebuild them. This, and the printing artifact-ridges are the only issues caused by the printing process - the rest is all design flaws. With a physical sculpt I can test pieces as I go, but with the 3D model it's a bit harder to tell how it's going to go.

The slots for his wrist (and ankles too - but they're not as bad) - there's just not enough room to string him easily because I've set the bar too close to the base of the slot. This won't be an issue with a larger scale hand, but this currently about 2 millimetres to string through, which was Not Fun. I'll need to break out a tiny drill bit for this.


His chest slips forward, making him slouch - this will be fixed by adding a teeny bit of a step at the base of his sternum.


I didn't take a photo of it - but tilting the chest to the side doesn't look fantastic either. It's to do with the slope of the ball-joint in the belly piece being too shallow, resulting in a stepped look similar to the line of the back in the above picture. Again, I can live with it at this scale, but this is something that I think will have to be altered in the 3D model for larger scale doll.

Next up: His knees.



They actually look quite nice if only the joint connecting the thigh is bent down.
The bit going into the calf however... urgh. In order to accommodate the curve of his calf, I think I've made the knee piece too long.
I may have to make his legs single jointed (as a last resort). I'll definitely have to do something to the 3D model here.



I'll be doing the fixes with Aves Apoxie Sculpt, which I've never used before, but is perfect for this purpose.

I need to do some (read: lots of) priming and sanding too, but that comes after the alterations. The surface of the print is very "toothy" but I need him to be a bit smoother. The only place he has noticeable ridges is the very top of his head, the  rest of the priming should go quite smoothly (oho! a pun!).


And to finish, a piece of advice:

Shut any kittens out of the room when taking photos of small dolls.
Basil picked the doll up BY THE HEAD at the exact moment I pressed the shutter button. Little sod.



Monday, July 2, 2012

From 3D Model to Resin-Cast Doll - Step 2

Step two is receiving the printed prototype a day before it was scheduled to arrive!



On initial inspection, he looks great (but so teeny).

There are a couple of issues I need to address before I can string him together.
I will need to go at him with some sandpaper and drill bits, some pieces haven't printed hollow (probably due to the teeniness), and I didn't allow for any ease between his joints and don't want to force anything, so I need to give the elbow and knee pieces a gentle reshaping.

Update:
Turns out that the un-hollowness was just residue leftover from the printing process, and I found that the force needed to fit his knees and elbows in was less than I thought.



I'm going to leave him strung for a few days, and "test" his design.
I've already picked up on some aspects that are going to need alteration, and will make a more detailed post about that later.