Printing on 3D objects for Helms of Awesome

Overview

At Frogman's 2009, I took a lot of notes from a class taught by printmaker and graduate professor Dennis McNett of [wolfbat.com[wolfbat.com]] In addition to standard printing methods, he's gotten into making simple skeletal shapes with cheap materials and covering them in his prints to give them texture. I made one of these for Halloween 2010, and even for a rough prototype the results are satisfying.

Materials

• Foam Core display board
• Cardboard
• Stapler
• Cheap paper
  • Bond paper
  • Copy paper - what I used
  • Newsprint?
• Prints - preferably something that resembles texture
• Glue - tons of options here
  • rice paste
  • lyntex
  • gel medium
  • elmer's glue
  • wood glue
  • modge podge

1- Cut your foam core into your basic shapes, and tape them together. To add small details to the shape like a pronounced brow or cheek bones, you can stack more layers of the foam core and tape it down to make it thicker. This is an easy to way to create curves or gradual changes in elevation on the piece's shape

• For wearable sculpture,
  • Breathing comfortably
  • Eye holes
  • Drinking?
• For larger scale work, consider tearing up foam padding or egg crate for comfort.

2-If you're using Elmer's or wood glue, add water until the glue/water ratio is about 3/1.

Start with the jagged corners and edges, and work your way in. You'll want to add as many layers as it takes until you can't see the wire pattern underneath.

3- Print your textures and graphics that will be visible skin of the sculpture. Note that you may need to tear down the prints and textures to match up with the angles and facets of your sculpture's surface. You can cut with scissors, but I think tearing it by hand gives a cool look as the segments overlap and meet each other.

4- Apply your glue to the cheap paper with a broad foam brush or gesso brush.

5- Wrap the texture skin around the bond paper, which should now be very sticky.

6- When the skin is complete, apply one last layer of glue to the whole surface, which will make the material stiff and glossy.

8- Wear it around, and be kick-ass.

Process 2

This is what I did, which has some changes in the early steps. I tried working with wood, but I got kinda frustrated with trying to join the pieces at odd angles to get the shapes I wanted. I tried working with foam core display board (like you used to use for you science project) and it worked just fine. It's cheap and easy to work with, and mistakes are easily undone.