3D print service turns children's drawings into sculptures

  • 08 Jan 2013

If sticking drawings to a fridge won't do, parents of pint-sized Picassos can put their child's art on a pedestal by having it 3D printed through a new service called CrayonCreatures.

The service is the invention of Bernat Cuni, a Spanish designer working in Barcelona with a focus on emerging 3D printing applications. "The idea came one morning when my daughter asked me to make one of her drawings as a toy with my DIY 3D printer, and I did it," says Cuni. "She was totally satisfied with a monochrome plastic version of her drawing, but I wasn't. I felt that something was lost in the translation from drawing to thing. That was the colour, the scratches of crayon that make a child's drawing so unique and expressiveness were lost.

Cuni revised the process to add full-colour printouts, and in turn, launched CrayonCreatures to help others do the same. The system is simple: The drawings of a diminutive Degas are scanned, interpreted by an artist at CrayonCreatures, and a full-colour print is produced on a ZCorp 3D printer, then shipped to the designer. It's similar to Child's Own, the drawing-to-plushie service, but uses the actual drawn details from the original artwork in the prints.

CrayonCreatures' process for transforming 2D sketches into 3D prints starts with outlining the drawings, then using CAD tools they "inflate it like a balloon," apply pressure physics to round out the shapes, and export the file for 3D printing. "I feel CrayonCreatures is a 3D printing application where the value is not on the fabrication process itself but in the service that it provides," says Cuni. "Often some 3D printed objects and projects rely on the technological 'wow' factor of 3D printing, and I try to avoid that."

There are some limitations to what kinds of drawings can be printed, but Cuni promises that workarounds can be found, even if a parent is raising a budding abstract expressionist. "Some things like thin walls and spiky shapes are not welcome because the object might collapse once it comes out from the printer," he says. "I make the 3D models as accurate to the original drawing as possible, and in some cases, if the character has super thin legs or hair, I have to make a blob around it in order to make it printable."

The printouts aren't as expensive as most commissioned statues, but still cost more than most figurines; each four-inch figurine is $150 - $130 (£93 - £80) for printing and $20 (£12) more for shipping to the US.

Beyond CrayonCreatures, Cuni is also exploring the intersection of toys and cutting edge fab technology through his "Jana" series, applying various images onto a plastic 3D printout of a small teddy bear, based on scans of a five year old girl's doll. "The idea behind the Jana series is the 'editing' capability of the digital environment," Says Cuni. "We have became very familiar editing our digital things -- from formatting a text in a word processing software to applying filters to our photos. So, when thinking that stuff will become digital as well, I thought about how plugins/effects/filters for the real objects might look."

Cuni has used a simple teddy bear form as way to experiment with digital patterns, textures, and data from the real world. He's superimposed a Google Map of Hong Kong on one, made another look like a sea urchin, and explored a variety of other sculptural techniques which are available at Shapeways.

While many still dismiss 3D printers as toys, Cuni is using his Jana series to explore a bigger vision. His goal is to capture an object in the real world through digital means, apply filters to the CAD model, and return it to the world in a process he dubs "The Instagram of Things."

Source: Wired.com

Images: Bernat Cuni