Valentine's Day Love Birds Sculpture

thingiverse

Valentine's Day Love Bird Sculpture inspired by the heart achingly beautiful works of Woodwhale Lab. *** TL;DR: Oh no valentine's day is less than a month away! what to do? 3d printing to the rescue! As it's probably the case for most artists, I am way too poor to be able to afford other artist's works. But then I stumbled upon the works of Woodwhale Lab's (Ukranian Artist) handmade animal sculptures, and confirmed my hypothesis. Therefore, I decided to design my own “love birds” sculpture, both as a way to practice manipulating and sculpting organic forms, but also as means to pay tribute to the beautiful and inspiring works coming out of Woodwhale Lab's mind. Important note--copying is easy. Even when it's really hard, it's easy. Original ideas are hard. If you like this sculpture here, you'll love the original artist's work. Please visit Woodwhale Lab's Etsy store and grab something from there or share their works online. *** Printing tips – all versions This is a medium-difficulty print, at least on my stock Anycubic Vyper.  If you print at the default size included here, your sculpture should turn out to be about 10cms (about 4 inches) in height when both birds are sitting atop the base--like on the pictures included here. That's kind of on the small side, and much harder to post process in my opinion, because there's a big chance you'll break an end if you're not super careful.  I printed the individual pieces using regular PLA, with pieces oriented so both the beak and tail tips need minimal supports. The default print settings of your printer should work well, but print at 0.01 or less to preserve the details of beak and tail. All versions of the birds have small “slits” at the bottom to help you place them on the box at about the distance in the pictures; you can use super glue to hold them together. The “Box” has a faint wooden texture meant to catch the paint when you're doing post-processing; but you don't have to use this box at all; any long rectangle or flat surface will do. Thanks to the little slits at the bottom, you can place these birds anywhere your heart sees fit. Printing tips – _merged.stl versions It's just each bird with both pieces merged; I suppose these could come handy if you print on a resin printer or have blind confidence in your support settings.  Printing tips - _key.stl and _standard.stl versions These files are exactly the same, except the _key.stl ones have little guides that should help you align the pieces after printing, which is good for the post-processing part. Try printing the parts in different colours and mixing and matching!  There is not mandatory orientation to place the birds on the box, so you could print more than 2 at different sizes, and spread them out to represent your family, for example <3 You can also make little pendants for your loved ones if you take the “merged” files and tinker with them on tinkerCAD :)  Post-processing tips Sanding is mandatory. A LOT of sanding is semi-mandatory. Assuming you oriented the pieces so the supports touch the invisible parts of the print you'll have to do a lot of sanding before they can sit flush against each other. The “_key.stl” versions should make this easier because the more you sand, the more slippery they get. Once you're satisfied with how the pieces come together, paint them separately. I wanted a finish close-ish to the sculptures of Woodwhale labs, so I printed everything in white PLA and painted directly on top, and then applied metallic paint for the top, and did a few passes of mustard-colour and golden acrylic for the bottom pieces, and the box. These are cheap paints because again, poor artist. For the finish, I sprayed them with clear matte, and the birds with glossy matte. If you're looking for a hyper-realistic wood finish, find the video called “Turn your 3D Prints into Believable Wood!”   One More Thing Despite your best efforts chances are your prints will not look perfect. And that is ok! Happy Valentine's Day! Design using Nomad on iOS.