Indian Elephants and Highland Cattle

[miniNature]

Hi all! After a summer of less time behind the computer, I picked up the hobby again.
I’ve created 5 new animal models for my 3D printed animal collection.

First of all, 3 cows of the Indian Elephant, in addition of my older creations of a calf and bull:

And I’ve a new species, or better to say, new breed. From the Scottish Highlands, 2 Highland cows:

They are available in multiple scales (and on request also scale-able to other sizes) on my site: https://www.shapeways.com/shops/mininature
Hope you’ll like the results!

 

[HansDig]

Fantastic items and of great quality ! Used his hippo in ne of my dio's.
Great to see you post your new creations on PF.

 

[Chris Oldfield]

Love the elephant - skin texture looks so real. Beautiful work.

 

[Dan Morton]

Outstanding!! The cattle are terrific, but I can't get past the realism of the elephants.

To 'imprint' the unique elephant skin with all the stretch marks, blood vessels, etc., do you use a number of positive and flexible transfers? What's the flexible material? How do you keep the "positive" on the flexible stuff?

Or do you use some other process I can't begin to guess?

Not that I would ever want to make an elephant!

Just curious.

All the best,
Dan

 

[Richard Baxter]

Braw hairy coos!

 

[balder]

Very fine work! Any plans for more livestock or North American wildlife (bears, wolves, deer, cougar, bison)?
I have ordered a couple of your animals on Shapeways and I have some others that I have my eye on.

Keep up the fine work!

-Gerald

 

[Oda]

The elephant is a must.It can be used in a variety of historical periods from ancient India ,through the Hellenistic kingdoms to the Mughal or Safavid empires.Beautiful creation.

Oda.

 

[miniNature]

Thank you all so much! It’s great to see my creations being appreciated here!

Very fine work! Any plans for more livestock or North American wildlife (bears, wolves, deer, cougar, bison)?
I have ordered a couple of your animals on Shapeways and I have some others that I have my eye on.

Keep up the fine work!

-Gerald

Thanks Gerald! Hope you’ll enjoy the new models! At the moment I don’t have any N-American ones on the way, but for the longer term, I want to create them for sure. I focused a lot on Africa before and now I’m a bit switching to the Indian subcontinent.

Outstanding!! The cattle are terrific, but I can't get past the realism of the elephants.

To 'imprint' the unique elephant skin with all the stretch marks, blood vessels, etc., do you use a number of positive and flexible transfers? What's the flexible material? How do you keep the "positive" on the flexible stuff?

Or do you use some other process I can't begin to guess?

Not that I would ever want to make an elephant!

Just curious.

All the best,
Dan

Thanks Dan! I create all my models fully on the computer. I use the ZBrush software, that’s also used very often in the film and game industry (and also see it here more often). It’s like sculpting with clay with your cursor. After I sculpt the base shape, I can use some self-made digital stamps out of real life photo material to create the structure of larger surfaces and after that I can add some final details like scars or extra wrinkles by hand with digital brushes.

So by creating these models digital, I’m able to scale every model to every size desired and I’m also able to create different poses out of one base model. With the service of Shapeways, I can let these models print in one piece with their high definition 3D printers, so also no boundaries you'll have with molds.

 

[Donald Johansson]

Looks awesome! Are you selling the 3D files somewhere as well, or do you just sell the finished models through Shapeway?

 

[miniNature]

Thanks Donald! No, these are exclusive on Shapeways.

 

[dmcHobbes]

Remarkable. The images shown on the Shapeways website- what level of finish do they represent? I see that most of the castings have multiple levels of finish for different prices. I would like to compare the different levels if possible. The ones being shown look really good.
Thanks,

Doug

 

[miniNature]

Remarkable. The images shown on the Shapeways website- what level of finish do they represent? I see that most of the castings have multiple levels of finish for different prices. I would like to compare the different levels if possible. The ones being shown look really good.
Thanks,

Doug

Thanks Doug! Yes, I sell most of them in 2 types of plastic. The cheaper one is a white nylon based versatile plastic. This one has a bit of a grainy finish, because it's printed out of nylon powder. In my personal opinion this material ends up good with larger scale animal models, because the grainy effect matches the furry effect most species have. The more expensive detailed plastic is clear resin based and gives a smooth surface (like it's designed). For the smaller scales, like for railways, only this more detailed plastic is available, because of thinner bodyparts are possible with this material.

For a comparison, I like to show you this amazing work by Miguel of Signatustudio, who painted multiple of my designs. In this pic you see all finished antelopes are in the cheaper versatile plastic. These are in scale 1/20 if I'm not mistaken, otherwise it was 1/22. The 4 dik-diks who are still in the grey primer, are all printed in the detailed plastic. The small dik-diks in the same scale as the other antelopes and the larger 2 dik-diks in scale 1/9.

 

[dmcHobbes]

I could have saved you the trouble if I had looked at some of your previous posts. Thanks for reposting. They do look exceptional painted up. Once I figure out what I would like to try to do I will give them a try.

Doug

 

[miniNature]

I could have saved you the trouble if I had looked at some of your previous posts. Thanks for reposting. They do look exceptional painted up. Once I figure out what I would like to try to do I will give them a try.

Doug

Don't worry, no problem I'm happy to help you.

 

[miniNature]

For everyone who is interested, since today Shapeways offers a Cyber Monday discount of 10% by using the promo code CYBERMON and this offer runs till December 4, 3:00am EST. On their main page you can find their terms & conditions.

During my Christmas holiday I'm planning to create new models, so I'm looking forward to show them to you.