How I Made My First Art Toy: Blender, 3D Printing, and Painting Process

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Today I show you my journey from Blender to 3D Art Toy. Detailing all of the steps I took, and also the mistakes behind creating my very first Art Toy.

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📷INSTAGRAM: @KeelanJon_

📷FILM AND SOFTWARE TOOLS
Sony ZVE10
Amazon Basics Tripod
Davinci Resolve
Blender

🛠️TOOLS USED IN PRODUCTION
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🎧MUSIC IN THIS VIDEO

As always, thank you for watching and see you in the next video :)

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0:00 - Intro
0:50 - Preparing the Model
3:16 - 3D Printing
7:32 - Sanding & Refining
9:00 - Painting

#blender #blenderart #blendercommunity #charactermodeling #characterart #characterdesign #blendertutorial #blender3d #blenderanimation #blenderartist #3dart #3dgames #3dprinting

[KeelanJon]

Creating this art toy has been an incredible learning experience, and I have so much to learn as I delve deeper into the 3D printing world. I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Feel free to share your own experiences and tips with myself and others below!

[apostolosroulias]

Haven't seen any mention in the comments: You can use the resin as a spot filler for small holes and gaps. Cure it with a UV flashlight or the curing station and it bonds to the resin perfectly. You could even use it as a glue. That gives you uniform behavior during sanding.
Awesome job!

[TheAeonmaxwell]

Man, you printed without hollowing each part???? try doing it so it will save you a lot of resin. still amazing work. cheers.

[TeacherClau]

You are such an inspiration! I love your creations! :D It's looks amazing! The sky is the limit!

[SpaceManRD]

This specifically applies to tape rather than masking fluid, but I have a small tip to help prevent bleed: After you apply the tape, lay down another light coat of your base color first, then your mask color.

[WinkDinkersonQQ]

pretty cool! This is exactly the reason i want to get a 3d printer, to make my own robot toys. Pro Tip, go look at how to handpaint mini's for Tabletop games, learn about dry brushing and layering, and how to water your acrylics down and apply multiple layers per color to get smooth even finishes, and very cool shading. Watering down acrylics and then doing a couple of coats, you get very nice clean even finish on your paint. Seems to me that airbrushing with the rubber mask stuff is more complicated and time consuming than necessary. The watered paint flows into and down, water tension and gravity. And when it dries the pigment follows the water. While i love your model, flat plain colors could be juiced a bit with shading and details. I only start with a flat color as my base, then i go to town on it to bring it to life.

[emmawilliamson]

Nice vid, i like to see your using a cardboard box for painting, I did that too :D but id love to get a proper spray box or build one. In terms of starting out with resin printing a few tips, .

1) Careful with the water washable stuff, sometimes it doesn't get clean enough. I'd recommend you get an ultrasonic cleaner, just remember to clean it after each use so resin doesn't stay in it. If you use IPA instead in that just put it in a jar or plastic bag thats filled with ipa inside the water tank, the loose resin should still be drawn away from the print.

2) In regards to cleaning, the resin water you leave behind btw after rinsing in your bucket is a pain because it takes FOREVER to evaporate and you CANT put that stuff down the sink because its harmful. I switched back to IPA because of this since it easily evaporates, just have to remember to wear a mask at all times (which tbh should be doing anyway with resin printing due to the VOCs) and just put the bucket outside during day when done with it.

3) If you do hollow prints just remember to clean very thoroughly as others have said because water washable resin will crack later down the line if its not properly clean inside and cured. I have had this happen and a little bit of liquid came out. So i personally always rinse about 2 or 3 times, so have a 2nd bucket with cleaner water to rinse in aswell Also get a little uv pen or led uv light you can put on a cable to stick inside the hollow print, the uv curing machine sometimes isnt enough to reach the interior parts of a hollow print.

Sorry for the wall of text :) Nice model and happy printing!!

[PIXXOD]

I run a Discord Server specific to Blender YouTube content creators, we have many top Blender content creators on there, including the donut king himself. Let me know what would be the best way to contact you, and then I can send you an invite link.

[TreeBeer]

If you really want the sharp lines that you’re looking for in masking the best way to do it is the old fashioned way, a very sharp penknife, and masking tape. I recommend scale model car builders for painting techniques…

[sespider]

I can't get Boolean to work in Blender 4.0 and up.
Either it does nothing.
Does the opposite needed.
Or just straight up crashes Blender

I had to revert to a older 3.2 Blender to get the boolean modifier to work. The sad part is the models aren't even high resolution and gave me issues.

[danmontgomery]

Please note, the curing step after a rinse & dry is not optional! Stay safe :)

[silviamancini]

OH WOW Keelan! I really really loved it!! More characthers and resin toy's process like this one!

[rarstorm]

Great video edition, really talented. I would like to share with you some tips that If you decide to do them will greatly increase your art.

•Try to hollow whenever you can your pieces before printing. This has many advantages as: a) You'll save a lot of money on resin, you will also save money by expanding the life of your nfep, as well as the life of the screen. b) Resin takes a lot of time to fully cure, when you print solid many micro parts of uncured resin will be trapped with time those will force its way out and it will crack your figure. c) By hollowing you'll have the opportunity to be more creative and add as instance a set of LEDs. Later you can always fill pieces with polyurethane urethane or Epoxy or Polyester Resin, for rigidity or weight balance if you need it, also for rigidity if you fill it you can add pins, for extra rigidity I use metal brass rods of many diameters. If you decide to hollow make sure you add holes as close to the build plate as you can as this will prevent a suction cup effect, and more holes for the drainage.

Having said that when you place your figures on the build plate tru chiti or any other slicer give it an angle, it doesn't matter if it takes more time, you will span the life of your nfep and will avoid many failures, it's always better to be more patient but having more success rate. And you can always heat your resin so you can lower the time per layer, i have successfull prints with just one second per layer and use a brewing band that is placed around the Vat to heat it.

Well sorry for this long comment, but when I started printed I did not know of any of this tips. Hopefully it is of good use to you. 😁

[davidea.]

When I saw "last backup I swear" I laughed out loud. I have a colleague who uses filenames like "new last" "new final last final" "true final last" and so on... 🤣
BTW very nice video! I will share it with a friend interested in bulding toys 😉

[Munkaa]

You have put a lot of hard work into this. The result is astonishing! Cheers!

[awildwildwes]

This is awesome. I've been wanting a figure of my OC for the longest time, and I got awesome friend that owns a 3D printer (I can't afford it 😫) who agreed to join me in this endeavor.
I am just about ALRIGHT with 3D modeling, I never printed before and painting is also pretty much new to me (thinking about getting an airbrush for that). Not to mention I would like to it to be articulated... So yeah, pretty daunting.

But seeing a journey like this is just... so exciting me, I'm pumped, no matter how long it takes, I'm in!

[snoozy_bozy]

Wow. This is incredible! I think the quality of your toy is not inferior with toys from supermarket. You inspire me to do same toy from my own character! Thanks for your video!

[chemistrybro_]

Also im not sure if you have started to manual support yet, but it is a lot better once you learn how to do it - on lychee slicer, you just use the "island finder" and then personally I put 0.8 mm support links on the islands, and then use a mixture of 0.5 mm, and 0, 3 and 0, 4 mm tipped supports on the rest of the model :)

For clean up stage.., idk if you care about any pointers/ sharing off ideas :D but im gona do it anyway ahha, you REALLY do not need to go as high as 2500 grit with clean up imo, I start with 200 -300 grit, and then go to like 600 grit and thats it, primer and paint layer will smooth out 600 grit just fine, 2500 just isnt needed :) feel like you probably waste a little time going all the way to 2500 grit

For the masking, Tamiya masking tape is king, they have many widths and so can be very useful, I like to put it on, kinda overlap areas, and then use scalpel/hobby knife (and I keep a really sharp one just for this) to cut along seems and edges, and get it into the exact shapes you need, you could for sure do that with your shoes there :) alternitevly tho, just hand paint the red after a white base, I used to mask everything and airbriush, but after improving at hand painting after trying it a few times now, id probably just hand paint that bit now

[bebo]

I love your videos so much! I’m glad the algorithm of YouTube recommended you a few months ago, I love your job! It’s really inspiring, and really good quality videos! Thanks to you I’m back to this journey of making my own designs

[elviskariuki]

This character would look good if animated.Anyways that's some awesome work.