This week our assignment was to make a mold. During the 3D printing week I noticed that someone 3D printed Neil’s head, and now it was my turn to go for this low hanging fruit. I wanted to make a mold of Neil’s head. I got in contact with the person who originally modeled Neil’s head, Fan Xue.

My original idea was to make a chia pet, but due to not being able to obtain chia seeds in time, I opted for a normal bust using some fibers for Neil’s hair.

I first put the bust of Neil in Bambu slicer and saw the first nightmarish sight of the project.

After printing things didn’t look much better. Even with the supports gone I felt like I was in the uncanny valley. In order to hide the layer lines, Anthony recommended that I paint bee’s wax on the model and use a hot air gun to blow the excess off. I sure hope this bust is not acting like a voodoo doll. I also printed two walls for my mold to make a 3 part mold. The process of filling up the mold with oomoo was very tedious. Anthony had a lot of oomoo that was about to expire, so he let me have that. It was a blessing and a curse because the oomoo was very thick and had trouble flowing into the mold. We even resorted to cannibalizing older oomoo molds to fill up some space. It finally dried and I was left with a beautiful gelatinous cube. I cut it open and poured in some drystone.

The result was…unsettling. I cleaned it up with some post processing and pretended to be an artist. I soldered some glasses out of some solid core wire.

Now I need some hair. If only there was a free source of white fibers… With the fibers obtained, now I got to style Neil’s hair. I used a spray on adhesive to attach the fibers to the drystone.

Philosopher Neil:

After a small haircut here is the final product. I’d say that looks like Neil!

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