3D printing has been around for a few years now, and with the technology being more mature and getting more and more attention thanks to makers from many horizons, and cosplay nonetheless, new doors a opening for cosplay makers!
And if you want to see one convincing example, just have a look at the example above which displays the work of Melissa Ng around her Sovereign Armor: the result is fantastic and shows great refinement.
Want to know more about it? Let's go then!
For the ones who might not yet have heard of 3D printing: 3D printing is a technology allowing the production of objects from a 3D model, and which can potentially be used by everyone.
There are different 3D printing technologies, but basically the production of an object consists in adding or fusing layers of a material (plastic filaments (PLA...) or resins are the most frequent, but you also have iron powder, pastry paste, concrete, cells... and many still to invent) on top of each others using heat, lasers or light. Nothing impressive when you think about it, but one had to have the idea :).
You can have a look at the video below to have an example of the 3D printing process:
3D printers offer different printing volumes going from a few centimeters to 50 centimeters or more, and some allow for the use of different material colors or pigments to add colors to your objects and spare you the need for painting your objects.
3D printers start to be quite affordable (you can get descent models for a 2 or 3 hundred euros/dollars) and can now be found quite anywhere. You can also find some 3D printing services onlineif you want to test.
As for 3D modelling software, you can start with
Blender which is totally free and has a lot of teaching material available in the Blender community or on YouTube.
Using 3D printing seems great, but the way it works forces a shift in competences: Where you had to spend some time drawing on cardboard/foam/fabric and cutting, you now have to spend hours using A 3D creation software to model the different pieces or your apparel.
Then you have to take into account the fact that 3D printing is still a young technology. 3D printing an object can take hours
and you will have to finetune the scale, thickness and rigidity of the printed object to fit your size and use, and this is without counting the moments you will have glitches... And there can be quite a lot of them from my personal experience, from the object not sticking to the plate to vibrations or temperature changes ruining a print, speed tuning...
And afterward you will still have to polish, paint, fit together/glue the different pieces...
You might wonder what is the advantage of using 3D printing for your cosplays then, if you have to learn 3D modelling and go through the time and pains of getting your model printed?
But if you take a step back, there are quite a few advantages to it, and the technology can open new horizons which could give a new dimension to your cosplays...
First, because all it takes to reproduce an object is the 3D model, some plastic filament and time, you can easily reprint a piece if one gets broken or lost. Moreover, adjusting a piece of gear to your liking is just a question of moving a knob to scale the model up or down (and time :) ). Pretty handy.
And this last option is fro mmy point of view the door to a new world for the cosplay area
(as for many other ones). For instance someone bigger or smaller than you could, after some finetuning, easily print your model to fit her/his size. This means that
you could easily build up a business around designing 3D models
for full cosplay or cosplay parts, and
share or sell
those (this is for instance what Lumecluster is doing). And you could yourself
benefit from the large community of cosplay makers around the world to reuse pieces
for your own designs! And there are aklready quite a few available oin Thingiverse for instance:
link.
All in all, I think 3D printing is really a promising technology, be it for cosplay, art, DIY but also cooking, medicine, housing and many other usage yet to invent. And with the communities such as Thingiverse or ideas such as the ones from Lumecluster this is a whole new world that opens for cosplay makers and cosplay-aholics...
Therefore keep an eye on it, and start levelling up your 3D modelling skills ;)
