A 3D printed cathedral, Da Vinci inspired machines, miniature creatures and fashion pieces – the winning designs for 3Doodler Awards celebrate the imagination and ingenuity possible with a 3D pen.
2016 marks the second year of the competition held by the world’s first 3D pen manufacturers, and has 9 different submission categories covering fashion, art and designer’s general ingenuity and imagination.
Making a house a home
Devin Montes is a designer-turned-YouTuber based in Southern California who 3D prints objects for his channel Make Anything. His 3D lampshade design earned first prize in the 3Doodler Interior Design category for the way he used a Start pen to reinvent an IKEA lamp.
On Make Anything, Montes also pits 3Doodler products against other 3D pens to find out which comes out on top.
Invention
Inventiveness comes in the form of a specialist Da Vinci category for which entrants created operable machines inspired by Leonardo’s ideas. Ala’ Fahmi Sawan made the robot below for his daughter. It’s capable of walking, and the eyes on stalks twirl at the flick of a button.
Another innovative entry is this ring that artist Heather Baharally managed to create from a single 6-inch long strand of 3Doodler filament.
Micro and macro creatures of the living world
Though only one of the categories specified the Living World as entry criteria, cute and complex creatures were a significant source of inspiration for the winners of many other categories, including both the Micro and Macro contests, and Fantasy section. If dragons count as ‘living’ creatures that is.
Doodler of the Year awarded to Gaudi’s magnum opus
Artist and teacher Cornelia Kuglmeier wins overall Doodler of the Year for her 3D penned model of Barcelona’s Sagrada Família cathedral, created using a 3Doodler PRO model.
To complete the project, Kuglmeier worked up to 10 hours per day, painstakingly reconstructing the architecture in stages. She even had to invent some of the features entirely from scratch, such as the apse, as of course La Sagrada Família is still unfinished.
2D to 3D
As 3D pens are entirely controlled by hand, we’re amazed at the amount of detail you can get from a 3Doodler, if you have a little time and imagination. All of the entries we’ve seen, from winners, runners-up, and the #3DoodlerAwards tag on Instagram have appeared effective and, even more importantly, fun to make.
In our opinion, adding a third dimension to designs is when a project really starts coming to life. The tools by 3Doodler are the kind of things we could only dream of when watching cartoons as kids, and we’d love to put them to the test ourself.
Featured image shows detail of Cornelia Kuglmeier’s Sagrada Família model, lit from inside to show ‘stained glass’ windows created by thinning 3Doodler plastic. Photo via: 3Doodler
