Will 3D Printing Win an Academy Award?

It's entirely possible! Two 2009 films nominated made extensive use of 3D printing in their productions: Avatar, nominated for Best Picture of the Year among others, and Coraline, nominated for Best Animated Feature Film. 

 

James Cameron, the man behind Avatar used 3D printing to produce figurines with which lighting tests were performed for "every shot in the movie". The figurines were produced by Legacy Effects.

 

LAIKA productions created thousands of objects used for extensive stop-motion animation in the movie Coraline. One of the fascinating outcomes was a system to create different facial expressions: 208,000 were possible. 

 

Both projects made use of Objet 3D printers. 

 

Good luck to both films in tonight's show. 

Comments

[Chris Frostt]

And the Academy Award goes to… a 3D printer. This year at the 82nd annual Academy Awards (3/7), movie stars will be sharing the spotlight with breakthrough technology. Avatar, nominated for best picture – along with art direction and visual effects – and Coraline, nominated for best animated feature film, were brought to the big screen thanks to innovative 3D printing (or rapid prototyping) technology by Objet Geometries.

[www.ems-usa.com]

Awesome. Seems like more and more movies are utilizing Objet. The movie Caroline also utilized this technology. I'd imagine this model took over 24 hrs to print... I'd guess $2k in material cost alone? Anyone else care to take a guess?