Digital Sculptures

During late 2019, I received an amazing 3D model of a Centaur by Jonathan Webb – it was highly detailed and beautifully carved using a digital platform. The task was to create a 3D physical prototype, whilst maintaining as much of the detail as possible and taking consideration of an appropriate scale that would highlight said details and also be cost effective – I decided to use one of our hobbyist machines (FDM) to complete the task. Jonathan's background as a sculptor includes working for the Jim Henson Creature Shop, as well as in stop motion animation, primarily for Cosgrove Hall Films, working mainly on children’s TV shows such as Postman Pat and Raa Raa The Noisy Lion, (as an animator as well as a sculptor). While at Cosgrove Hall Films he worked with special effects legend Ray Harryhausen and the Centaur model was originally designed for that project, (Odysseus-The Legend). He started working digitally some years ago and have worked on a variety of projects, including most recently a TV documentary about celebrities and plastic surgery, a digital anatomical reference library for the visual effects and games industry and promotional work for Game of Thrones for Sky TV. The challenge was to minimise the amount of support structure used in the print, to achieve a smoother finish, and reveal the qualities of the models, by printing at a layer height of 0.06mm (0.4mm nozzle diameter). Thus the 3D digital model was split into 5 parts. Jonathan did a fantastic job, post-processing these parts, which – now looking at the final finish – are seamless.We continued working together, when Jonathan provided me with another digital sculpture of an orangutan. I have to commend Jonathan’s abilities, both as a digital sculptor and for his ability to manually post-process the 3D prints – a great example of the amazing possibilities achievable through the combination of digital and analogue techniques.