Action Figures

I was showing my partially-completed RepRap to my 10-year-old son this weekend. I explained to him how it worked and what it could do. He thought about this for a bit and said, "So, you could make action figures with it?"

I'd been so caught up in the industrial side of things that I hadn't really thought much about the leisure aspect. Custom toys and miniatures are an ideal application of RepRap. They're small, easy to make and, if they break, nobody dies.

Hi Steve,

... i had a similar talk with my older son (9 years) - he was fascinated of the promise to build more lego-bricks and some cool parts for his Playmobiles.

I had a long dispute until he accepted, that i won't build lego so soon

Now we're on CNC-milling of toys and 'usefull stuff' and he and the younger (7 years) are busy by re-arranging my spare time at the free weekends ...

Viktor

Yep my four yesr old is waiting no so patiently for a Cubix robot to come out of a RepRap

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Ian
[www.bitsfrombytes.com]

This is already being done in a way:
[www.figureprints.com]

> This is already being done in a way:
> [www.figureprints.com]

I guess they may be making use of this: [ogle.eyebeamresearch.org]

Neat way to capture this. It seems that it only works on windows, but may work through wine (not sure)!

---

Regards,

Erik de Bruijn
[Ultimaker.com] - [blog.erikdebruijn.nl]

I bought an old version of Poser tha came with a british computer magazine, but it turned out to be too complicated for me. Had intended to do figure type sculpture for a local historic reconstruction but was all too involved. The program is too image oriented rather than 3d oriented for me.

[en.wikipedia.org]

... poser is nice for posing predefined figures with poser-specific parameters, but not so good for constructing them - i worked sometimes with Poser 3 and 5 for populating 3D-scenes constructed elsewere ...

For constructing 3D-worlds, objects and sometimes figures too i use Lightwave and sometimes 3DSMax, here you have the right environmet and tools.

Viktor

Apologies for pulling this up, but... I suggest taking a look at Revoltech joints as a means of getting a start on poseable action figures. If you can reverse-engineer them, you could make a prototype single-axis joint that can be pegged into seperate components for double-axis limbs.

Other than that, at this stage the RepRap can't quite pull off the texture to reproduce a Godzilla toy accurately--I've got a 3D model of an early Showa era Godzilla--which is a shame.

I'm quite probably building a reprap, and I would quite certainly give something like this a try. I love the industrial side, and the idea of making more repraps from mine (in all probability a laser-cut repstrap, as I have no access to another rapid prototyping system.) However, I would probably use mine primarily for making little sculptures and game pieces, etc.

well, if you do make an action figure, feel free to share it through www.reprap-models.com, we already have a few leasure items, such as a Checkers board, a yoyo and a.. well im not even sure what to call it, so ill just use the creators name "helicopter toy", hehe.
Direct link to the games section: [reprap-models.com]

Regards,
-Logan

Hi
I work as a 3d modeler and animator in the advertising industry, so naturally something like the reprap interests me. especially organic shapes like action figures. The only thing that concerns me from what I've seen is the resolution of the reprap. In my line of work detail is everything, and the prints I've seen online done with the reprap doesn't seem detailed at all. Does anyone know of a way to make the reprap print in finer detail. I know this will have an impact on the speed of the process, but i would rather wait a week for a good model to print, than get a bad model in a day. Here is a nice link to some profetional software and rapidprototyping [www.zbrushcentral.com]

In many Role Playing Games and Table Top war games, the use of miniatures is becoming more and more prevalent. IF RepRap had the resolution to produce, even moderately detailed miniatures, this could be a big market for RepRap.

Unfortunately, these miniatures are usually about 2.5cm high (1 inch), which I believe would not be within the RepRap's current capabilities. But larger scale miniatures (and smaller) do exist.

One thing that might be feasible for RepRap at the moment is for Miniature Terrain objects, like walls, houses and such. Even if you had to print such objects as components and then assemble them, this would not be a problem as many miniature gamers do this any way (it is part of the hobby).

Also, there is a company called CheapAss Games that make low quality (printed from a home printer quality) board and card games. This is another market that RepRap could potentially have. This could allow for cheap production of parts for small run games that could not be done as cheaply with mass production. Or, you could have the games distributed directly as files for people to download and print directly (both normal paper and RepRaped parts).

these are potentially large groups of people would would be willing to acquire RepRaps and make this technology more mainstream.