solarbird | a small project that turned into a long project

I mean, not that long a project. But.

I got it into my head that it'd be fun and not too difficult to print a Krosis dragon priest mask from Skyrim as a birthday present for a housemate. This was, um... somewhat wrong. About the ease of it, anyway.

I mean, I mostly print functional prints for devices, and that was part of it. But really every step took a lot more time than I expected - even printing with a massive 1.0mm nozzle, which is huge by FDM printer standards. And it took a few tries but by closely tending a print over its two-day print run I managed to get something pretty nice. There were problems, but mostly on the inside, and fixable.

Painting also took more time than I expected - I haven't really painted since art school lol - though a lot of that was research and more materials time than I'd really bothered to consider before.

It took so long that it ended up being a New Year's present instead of birthday, and I was still working on it the night before and actively worried about wrapping it because although the outer spray coat should've been dry by then and was, it was still soft and I was terrified of the paper sticking to it. (I ended up wrapping it very loosely.)

But it came out well, I'm pleased. So here, have some photos of the mask.