Futurama remains a popular inspiration in the world of 3D printing, with it touching on some minor characters like Beelzebot, and now the Hypnotoad.
Maker Jason Sly created this extremely impressive print which goes for a more realistic look instead of its cartoon origin.
Sly tells us that, unlike most of the prints we feature, this did not start off as a model made in something like Blender or Fusion 360. Instead it was originally a physical sculpture made out of polymer clay that was then imported into Autodesk Recap as more than a hundred images taken at every angle.
This created a digital model that was edited in Meshmixer where some imperfections were removed and more details not achieved in the clay version were added.
With the high level of detailing here printing took around 10 hours for the two separate pieces – 3.5 hours for the head and around seven for the body. These two join together with a peg that also allows the head to be rotated.
Hypnotoad was scaled to be as close in size to a real animal as possible, with the print on this page measuring in at 10.5 centimetres lip-to-tail, and 10 centimetres knee-to-knee. This print is also 6.8 centimetres tall.
To avoid a lot of extra sanding, this model had some of its features exaggerated so that extra layers of filler would not reduce the fidelity of the details while still covering up the printing lines. This apparently worked well here as some sanding was still required, but not nearly as much as there could have been.
Painting was done with cheap acrylics, with a brown wash following it to make the details stand out. The eye pupils were drawn with first with a pencil, then with a fine point pen to get a better outline, before they were painted black.
To get the wet look here, several layers of matte clear coat was used and the eyes were hand painted around a dozen times with Testors gloss clear coat.
The files to make your own are available for free from Thingiverse, but Sly is offering printed versions in his Etsy store. $25 buys you an unpainted Hypnotoad, and a completely finished one similar to what you see in the gallery below is going for $150.
