I′ve had somewhat of an unintended break from 3D, but fear not! I haven′t stepped away from it altogether. I have been busy working on a few different client projects of late (amongst other things) and there is one project in particular that I would love to share with you, but I′m not really allowed to talk about it just yet.

I will say that it is a non–human cat–like creature that is going to be a 3D printed figurine. I started off with a base mesh created from a mish mash of some of my different character bases in Maya. Once the rough proportions were sorted, I sculpted and prepped the character figure for print in ZBrush. Admittedly, this isn′t something I had done before, but I was confident that I knew enough about the process to take on the project. I also took a few tidbits from this article on the subject instructables.com/id/prepare-3d-model-for-3d-print to double (or triple) check and ensure I didn′t miss or leave out anything important. If you are ever unsure or concerned about preparing files for 3D printing, a lot of companies will have their own model checking tools that you can use to check for any potential print errors also.

The ‘mystery’ figurine is for a new product line that serves a purpose we′ll just say. I worked fairly closely with the client throughout the process as it was based on their original concepts and put a few different alternate options together to ‘assemble’ their preferred version of the character. There was some ‘unfamiliar territory’ along the way, but I do love learning on the job and it is often the best way for me to progress quickly and learn new things; particularly when deadlines are involved.