A sea monster has been brought to life thanks to an Irish designer and her use of clay sculpting, 3D scanning, modeling and printing.  

Don’t believe in sea monsters? The beautiful work of Amy Doran might just change your mind. The designer is a graduate of the National Film School at I.A.D.T in Dublin, Ireland.

While at university, she studied 3D design, model making and digital art. For her final project in college, Doran decided to 3D print a monster straight out of James Cameron’s second Avatar film. To do this, she used a 3D concept model of the sea creature and printed it to be 55cm (22inches).

Altogether, her project took around 15 weeks to complete. But for the 3D print, it took just 6 weeks to bring the monster from concept to production.

Doran explained her motivation behind creating the monster to i.materialise. She said: “I wanted to be challenged and I wanted to go beyond creating a small 3D print which was required as part of my college brief.”

The Making of a Scary Sea Monster

Since its finish, the print has received a lot of attention from the I.A.D.T Graduate Exhibition in Dublin to the New Blades Graduate Exhibition in London. But also, the Exhibition by Emerging Artists 2016. This took place at the Courthouse Arts Centre in Co. Wicklow, Ireland.

Doran used a mix of clay sculpting, 3D scanning, 3D modeling and 3D texturing. She then chose i.materalise’s online printing service to create the final object.

She decided to print her sea creature in Paintable Resin. As a result, the finished print didn’t need any post-processing. Doran added: “As for post finishing, I currently had it on display, untouched in its raw form and mounted on an acrylic rod attached to a handmade base.”

Want to learn more about Doran’s project? Make sure to visit her website. Wondering why it is that Doran liked using 3D printing so much?

She explains: “It gives a sense of reality to the project, especially when audiences are so used to viewing 3D digital models on screen.”

Source: i.materialise