My second experiment with the solid printer was rather different. I’ve recently been creating little interactively animated characters. So rather than concentrate on creating more shapes and textures right away, I thought I would make a radical switch, and bring my little animated friends into the real world.
It just happened that I had — just this week — modeled my latest interactively animated guy, so I gave Travis Kirton the file to print him on the 3D printer. Here was the result, beautifully photographed by Travis:
Of course this is just the beginning. What I really want to do is animate this in the real world. To do that I will need to create an entire series of printed sculptures these little guys, each one in a different position, and spin them around while flashing a strobe light in sync, to make a 3D Zoetrope.
This was famously done a few years ago by Pixar, but sculptural Zoetropes date back for decades. One thing that intrigues me about all of this is the idea that you can print out the entire machine in a one shot — a single 3D print could contain all of the animated figures in their different poses, as well as the turntable that supports them.
That would be very cool.
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