Reflections

Here is the first of three new prints I have been working on recently.

'Reflections' came to my attention when Bruno Birkhofer posted a different picture on Google+ last week. All his pictures are beautiful but, once again, it was one of his black and white portraits that inspired me to try another sculpture.

Modelling the pose in my favourite character modelling program was fun, as usual, but it proved particularly tricky to place the hands in exactly the right position. Several of the joint movement ranges have to have their range limitations turned off just to get close. 

In a moment of over-zealous optimism I decided to replicate the model's facial expression and kept the eyes closed but the mouth open. This involved a significant amount of cleaning up in Blender for a detail that ultimately proved too small to show in the final print. 

Not to worry - one day I may be able to sell these models and perhaps I'll even be able to afford a nice high-resolution DLP printer like the Kudo3D and then they will look even better.

I'm now getting the hang of using Simplify3D to slice my models so that the support material is placed where it's needed. The only thing I got wrong this time was placing insufficient support underneath the ponytail. The tip broke free during printing but fortunately the print managed to correct itself leaving enough to look reasonably OK.

Here's a couple of photos of the final print using translucent coffee-coloured PLA from 3D Filaprint, at 0.1 mm layer resolution with support enabled.

Close-up reproducing the pose in Reflections

The full model, showing a nice reflection of its own