Last month, Davide wrote about Things3D and their adoption of Aardman characters into their nascent universe of Smart 3D Printed Figurines. The site, devoted to interactive 3D printed figures licensed from movies and games, had yet to officially start selling Aardman’s iconic claymation characters, until today. Things3D has thrown open the doors to its online shop and stocked its e-shelves with collectibles from Wallace & Gromit, Morph, and Shaun the Sheep.
Through Things3D, lovers of Aardman’s characters will be able to purchase their favorites for as low as £55.00. Every figure has been hand posed and met the standards of the production company. The original clay characters were scanned using an Artec 3D scanner and 3D printed in full-color gypsum so that each print is nearly identical to its master. In addition to the Premium Figurine™ of each character, standing at over 3″ tall, Things3D is also selling limited edition Premium Statues™, over 7″ tall, with only 100 total statues in stock for every figure.
All of Things3D’s ‘smart’ 3D-printed products feature the company’s Ownerchip technology, opening up the figurines for a wide array of interactivity. While associated apps for the chip are still in the works, owners of the Aardman prints (and others on the way) will be able to scan their figure with their smartphone and register themselves as the owner. The chip also, then, verifies the authenticity of the print. In the case that, somehow, people copy Things3D’s copies of Aardman’s characters, the embedded chip will determine which is the authorized replica and which has been pirated. More importantly, as apps are released along with Wallace and Gromit or Morph, players will be able to interact with the games using their 3D printed figurines.
Things 3D has already planted the seeds for such a gaming/3D printing ecosystem, but will need independent app developers to make it flourish. With their developer’s software development kit, app writers will know how to tie their games in with Things3D’s Ownerchip technology and ‘smart’ 3D-printed products. To know exactly how such figures will be used along with smartphone and tablet apps, we can see how things play out with the first such 3D printed tie-in with Chimpact, a game that iPhone users have given four and a half stars in the App Store for being highly addictive.
In addition to the Aardman characters already being sold at Things3D and the soon-to-be-released Chimpact figures, it looks as though Things3D also has more prints from Aardman in the works, including a collection called “Morph Unboxed”, so we’ll likely be giving you another Things3D update in the near future.
