Alice In Wonderland White Rabbit

[Ethan]

UPDATE: KITS ARE READY SEE LAST PAGE

I thought I would take some advice and post my current digital project on a more appropriate section of the forum.

This is my first digital sculpture that will be printed and sold as a kit at 150mm in height; relative to 200mm being 6 foot high or my current standard scale.

The White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland is the first in a small series I will be sculpting and producing. I plan on making 5 characters if all goes well!

My take on this piece is a darker, more realistic picture, taken from reading the story and trying to get into the base psyche of each character. White Rabbit was a stingy, overbearing, rude, and condescending creature to all who were of equal or lower social standing. To his betters he was a groveling, sniveling wimp, who followed like a puppy dog and could be described as a "yes" man. I want to focus on the way he treated those he thought inferior.

The pose is based on him looking down on someone (Alice) as if he is standing in the court of the queen and Alice was in audience. His disdain of Alice should be seen in his stance and facial features when the piece is finished.

Currently you are looking at some early WIPs and my up-to-date version. I have posed the character and started the wrinkles; which are not correct and will be changed. The right arm will be moved as well. I was going to put that hand into his coat pocket but I don't like the look. There is still much work to be done but I hope to have him over the next couple weeks.

I am currently studying in college to become a character modeler for movies, vid games, and the collectibles industry so this project and overall business venture is to help pay for me to continue learning and producing interesting kits for you!

I do not have the official cost of the piece yet but I am going to do my best to keep it to around 59USD; mostly depending upon casting cost. The goal is to get 50 kits out there for you guys to build and paint. If you have an interest please let me know so I can better prepare for the future.

UPDATE!! Below you will find the first set of images from Test Print #1 at 80mm. Look to the end of the thread for the rest of the images.

Thanks for checking it out!

 

[billyturnip]

I like it Ethan and I also like the fact that you've used Lewis Carroll as inspiration rather than Disney. Good work and wish you every success in this and your studies.

Roger.

 

[RKapuaala]

Spectacular work Ethan!

 

[darkeye]

nice one Ethan. ...........coat detail is killer. look forward to seeing more from you. let us know how the printing goes and such.

atb --tim

 

[Ethan]

Roger: Thanks so much! I want to always use the original ideas as inspiration for my creations. It's what I look for when I'm painting and I'm sure it's what others enjoy as well!

RK: Thanks! I've seen some of your work in this section, very nice stuff!

Tim: Thanks! I hope the detail prints and paints well! I am going to use my own printer for the proofing process. It should come in within the next few weeks which means I have a lot of work to do to get ready!

To all: Sad to say the life of a student caught up this week for a while. I will only be able to work on the piece tomorrow during the day and a bit in the evening. I should be able to fix my problems though and get a bit farther towards finishing time.
Big workshop this week in Dallas for the CG world; I hope to learn a bit more about what I can do to create better and better pieces for all of you to enjoy!

Ill have some pics before bed tomorrow of the adjustments and additions. Thanks for all the views!

 

[darkeye]

your own printer?? wow! how cool is that. what make did you choose Ethan?? color me green! lol.

atb --tim

 

[RKapuaala]

Ethan definately share your printer experience here. I can't afford one yet myself, but I will be saving up for one.

 

[Ethan]

It's finished! Almost anyway. I still have to get it all prepped for printing but here is the completed piece with one color option fully rendered.

 

[Ethan]

Another Render. This will be closer to the Box Art on the kit packaging.

 

[Ethan]

Just a quick update on the printing. We are working with some practice prints on small objects while we wait for better calibration information. I will have official test results soon. Until then, here is the official box art for the kit!

 

[RKapuaala]

Tim are you using the formlabs printer that is on kick starter? Or what brand?

 

[Ethan]

It's called the B9 Creator and it was a kick starter project that ended early this year. We got the printer in last week and finally got to start experimenting with quality over the last weekend and this week. So far everything looks really good but the way this printer works is the program converts the model into slices along the z axis and projects a sliced image from a projector below a vat of liquid resin. The resin is light activated and each slice is hardened on a plate that slowly rises up along the z axis as each slice is introduced. The issues right now is the resin slices have a tendancy to cure on the non-stick surface of the vat AND the plate and once that happens the slices start going kind of crazy. We have 2 prints that worked out marginally well so far.

This print is at 50 Microns and you can see a really decent quality but the printer still lost a couple slices, making the print too rough. Scale is about 2" from end to end

This print finished last night at 25 microns along the horizontal. The side you can't see had some support material issues (too far cured to make a clean break); you can see that residue on the bottom edge. You will notice a couple of blotches on the face from where the vat's non-stick surface was damaged I think from having prior attempts stick to it. This caused the printer to project a false image in those spots. We are working over the next few days to get a new non-stick seal for the vat to fix this issue. Aside from that we need to find a better system of support material and we will be ready to go. As soon as I can get the rabbit cut into castable parts that is!

 

[RKapuaala]

That second pistol look cleaner regardless of the flaws, but is it 2" also.
I was looking at the Formlabs Printer which also prints at 25 micron layer thickness and uses lazer frequencies to heat the material. The have some sample pieces that are absolutely stuning and the price is about the same as the B9 Creator.
Here is a link http://formlabs.com/pages/our-printer. I noticed that they support their pieces on long threads that are snaped off. I would be interested to see how well that works in real life.

 

[mash3d]

Great job on the White Rabbit. I've been wanted to tackle something with Fur, like the bearskin hats of the royal guards.
Just haven't around to doing the research on how to do it yet.
I've been looking at the B9 creator also.

 

[Ethan]

Ya that is the ultimate complication; being able to snap off the support material without having major cleanup afterwards. It is all about the cure time per layer. Right now we are trying to focus down the cure time on the support material so it is stronger than the print at just the right level so it can basically peel right off the print with no damage what-so-ever. With our printer the overall size of the finished piece is very dependent upon that 25 micron quality. currently we have a 2"x1.5" flat space with a 8" vertical space to work with at that high level. We are looking at some options to increase that space to an overall 4x5x8 in which case we can do almost anything if we cut the sculpture at the right points.

Hopefully soon I'll have some more (real world) tests to show with the actual rabbit since that will be around 150mm completed which I think is a perfect kit size. I have faith that if we can tweak this printer a bit then I'll be able to produce truly perfect proofs for production. We shall see!

 

[Ethan]

Mash: It's a pretty amazing process once I figured out the correct steps! The hardest part is keeping the topology clean which I did not... so my process for cutting this rabbit into printable and castable parts is a nightmare right now! But its great for learning the process backwards and forwards! Once I am able to start Alice; she will be a breeze!

 

[RKapuaala]

Nothing ventured nothing gained Ethan. Keep us posted on your progress.

 

[mash3d]

Mash: It's a pretty amazing process once I figured out the correct steps! The hardest part is keeping the topology clean which I did not... so my process for cutting this rabbit into printable and castable parts is a nightmare right now! But its great for learning the process backwards and forwards! Once I am able to start Alice; she will be a breeze!

yeah Topolgy is a bear. You may try cutting the parts up and making a new mesh and re-projecting the details onto it.
Are you using the decimation master plugin before exporting the parts? and what was the print time on the pistol?

 

[Ethan]

Im figuring out that process over the next few days. I wasted about 5 hours trying to decimate first and then dynamesh and use the curve slice to cut the parts but decimated somehow makes it impossible to reproject; maybe. I have no knowledge in this particular area so I am experimenting a lot! Gonna start from the beginning again this next round and see if I can get the parts separated cleanly another way. I am definitely making use of all the plugins though!

The print time for the first pistol was 7hours sitting vertical, barrel pointed down. The second pistol was lying flat and it took 1.5hours to print. I am looking at about 40hours print time at least for the rabbit, not counting pulling parts out and resetting the machine for each part.

 

[RKapuaala]

Woohh, let us know what your electric bill looks like after printing the Rabbit!