This week’s selection is the delicate Vinegaroon by Canadian 2D/3D artist Florence Chan.
The Vinegaroon is a component of a larger work to develop a replica of the Mecha-Glove from the movie Hellboy. If you’re not familiar with the plot, the glove is used in the movie to summon the character to our world.
This is not the first time the artifact has been modeled. In fact, MythBuster Adam Savage has obsessed over this particular replica for several years, as it is a most challenging item. But Chan was able to use Savage’s detailed notes to complete a design of the Vinegaroon itself.
Here’s a video with Savage explaining his project:
The notes were not sufficiently detailed to directly model the item, so Chan had to resort to additional sources. She explains:
The vinegaroon was modelled in ZBrush and referenced more directly from image searched material involving Mastigoproctus giganteus, which actually grows up to 85mm – which makes this print of the bug rather small (by about half)!
The model is extremely delicate, as you can imagine. Here we see the scale of the object compared to a common bottle cap.
While the design of the arthropod is highly detailed, what also impresses me is the print itself. It was apparently done on a Stratasys Objet machine in VeroClear material by the looks of the print.
The impressive part of the print is how it was cleaned of support material (which typically completely surrounds the print, top and bottom) without any of the tiny structures breaking off. If you’ve ever cleaned a spindly item from an Objet 3D printer, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Want to try this one yourself? You can! Chan has made the print files available for download in a 15MB archive. It’s provided with a CC non-commercial attribution license that will permit you to remix the model in any way.
As you can see, the 3D model is extremely detailed. It should be sufficiently detailed for scaling up for printing lobster-sized versions, if one were interested.
Via Florence Chan
