For this year’s Comic Relief Red Nose Day charity event, 3D printing made an appearance in the form of celebrity caricature red noses.

Comic Relief is a British charity which was launched way back in 1985. The charity hosts an event every year on the BBC aimed at entertaining people and encouraging them to donate.

The event is called Red Nose Day and incorporates, you guessed it, lots of red noses. Every year, these red noses are slightly different and can be bought from local shops. They play a major, yet very fun, part in helping the fundraising.

This year, one off bespoke 3D printed red noses were made by Didgets2Widgets (D2W), a London-based 3D printing company. The 3D printed noses are caricatures of nine celebrities and, although you can’t buy them in shops, they looked great on TV.

This year, the show included celebrities such as; Sir Lenny Henry, Jonathan Ross, Rob Beckett, Romesh Ranganathan, Sally Phillips, Warwick Davis, Miranda Hart and many more.

The event took place on the 26th March, 2017, but is still available to watch on BBC iPlayer (for those who live in the UK).

Celebrities as 3D Printed Red Noses

Didgets2Widgets and Comic Relief’s creative team initially had a meeting to discuss how they could create the red noses. D2W said: “It was immediately clear that we could recreate these using Nylon SLS.”

However, this material is always printed in white. In order to achieve the red color, the prints needed to be hand decorated after they were printed.

Creating a CAD file was a simple process as Comic Relief’s design team had Adobe Illustrator images for every caricature. Also, only head on and sideways images were needed.

This is because the rear of the print has a slot for a human nose to fit into. The print needed to be flexible enough that this slot could be pinched open and placed comfortably on a face.

3D printing this design was simple enough using the company’s Nylon SLS technology. After this, the prints were sent to the decorator who lightly sprayed the noses with a white 2-pack primer. 

They then added in all of the other colors and created a flawless finish which impressed the Comic Relief team.

Orla Flood, Account Director Creative at Comic Relief, said to the Digits2Widgets: “Just a quickie to say we all love the noses!! They have genuinely surpassed our original expectations! A big thank you to you and your team”

Source: Digits2Widgets