March, 14, 2021 by Andrew Farmer in BJD and Smart Doll Printing
Sometime early last year during my downtime, I came up with the idea to create a fantasy style outfit with accessories for Smart Doll, which was inspired by the elf ears released earlier the previous year. I noticed that there had been a distinct lack of external accessories for the BJD brand.
Toy Companies often have the opportunity to bid for licences held by media companies to create toys from popular intellectual property. This is the case with Volks, whose product Dollfie has had many limited releases of IP branded characters over the years. Some of these limited releases feature external accessories. A great example of this is the Saber Lily from December 2010 and Ruler Jeanne d’Arc from December 2018, both of which feature armour and weaponry.
After sketching out some ideas on Clip Studio Paint, I came up with a basic model that I felt happy with. Something that wasn’t too difficult to model and print as a starter while looking aesthetically pleasing. The idea of this sword came to me while listening to space rock opera. It has the resemblance of a comet traveling through space with the tail as the blade.
This, coupled with the elf ears and some other ideas I had sketched up, lead to the idea of a full space fantasy costume set. Using Chitose as a base, I sketched some basic costume ideas to go together with the sword. I really like design 2.
he second design is a favorite!
Once I was satisfied, I began hard surface modelling the weapon accessory in Maya. While I set out to model an eight-pointed star for the centre area of the hilt, I decided that for the first iteration, it was best to keep things a little simpler.
The cross-guard area of the weapon ended up being a little ugly and during feedback in the design phase, it was pointed out that the weapon would indeed look better without it, however as this was more of an exercise for me than a final product, I decided to keep it in the final product as a challenge of sorts.
Once complete, I encountered my first problem; the scale of the weapon. As I wanted to print this on an SLA printer (for its superior resolution and ability to print finer details), the total print size of the printer was far smaller than what I wanted the weapon to be printed at. Scaling the weapon to the maximum size of the ANYCUBIC Photon SLA printer yielded a maximum size on the Y axis of 15cm, approximately the size of your hand.
The first print turned out realy small!
To resolve this issue, I returned to Maya and split the model into two parts. However, this would leave a clear slice in the model where it would need to be glued, which wouldn’t look great aesthetically. Instead, I cut the accessory at the base of the blade and hilt. And extended the area that would make up the insert for the tang of the blade.
Finally! It was time to slice the model up and begin printing!
And after a few failed attempts…
(Not enough UV resin…!!!)
I had a completed print at a decent size!
You have to be careful of any unsealed resin on the vinyl material of the doll for it may stain it!
I hope to continue producing these prototypes in the future. This will be an ongoing personal project of mine. Overall, creating this print was a great learning experience when it comes to designing, modelling and printing your own ideas and products. While I have been using FDM printers for some time now, this was my first print using my own design and an SLA printer.
