Mini "Monster" Truck (Human Skull)

thingiverse

A Mini "Monster" Truck - I decided to make the name a little more literal, and I'm hoping to make a few more of these. I'm dangerously low on white filament so I had to print this at a reduced size, unfortunately. As soon as I order more I'm going to reprint this, as honestly I kind of think it's fun. I'll likely create custom supports for it at that time, so it can be printed a little easier. Entry for the Thingiverse #RemixChallenge How I Designed This One of my earliest 3D Models I'd made was a simple skull - I wanted to learn to create models from pictures instead of just free-handing it and figured a skull would be a challenging place to start. When this challenge appeared, I knew I wanted to take something from my old projects and give them a new life - when I saw the Mini Monster Truck, I decided a "Monster" Truck series would be a lot of fun, and remembered the ole cranium collecting dust in my Blender/Old Saves/ folder. However, my original model was rather dated - a mere 2,200 triangles (Picture Below). My first step was to update the skull itself, smooth it out, and bring it up to snuff so that the printed model wouldn't be obviously polygonal. After smoothing it out, I had to reshape the innards - I had modeled the original skull to be hollow, but still manifold. I had to tear out the inner walls and create volume in most of the skull - but I wanted the Nose hole to be an actual hole, so I had to model around a nasal passage. I'm glad I went this route, as I think filling the nose in as I did with the eyes wouldn't look as good. Next, I simply had to detach the Monster Truck from the base piece (Created by Jakejake) with the suspension, and pop the skull on top - which took far longer than I'd like to admit. I then did a few model tests to ensure the wheels would clear the jaw, and make sure everything would still fit properly in the end. Final step was simply to print, assemble, and take pictures. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and intend to print a few more, and create some more "Monster" trucks in the future. Original Skull Model, ~2,200 triangles. Updated Skull Model, ~14,000 Triangles. It's alive! ALIVE!