Spanish artist Sonia Verdu designs, sculpts, paints and photographs some of the most stunning articulated dolls that I’ve ever seen, so when she got herself a 3D printer she took her skills to the next level. While her first project was a piece of scenery for her dolls, she next took on her bread and butter – articulation – and 3D printed an awesome jointed robot, which you can find and download on Thingiverse.
When Verdu creates her customized, jointed dolls, she sculpts them from polymer clay and then meticulously paints on the skin tone and details. She even handcrafts all of the clothing and accessories for each doll. The process is, as you’d imagine, quite time consuming, often taking over a month per doll. And, if you look at the examples on her blog, it’s easy to see why.
While the level of detail and finish capable with a desktop 3D printer isn’t quite there for her to make her typical dolls with them quite yet, her ability to create articulation is still incredible. The amount of personality that her little robot can display is mainly due to the elastic bands that hold him together.
Once all of the robot parts have been printed, cleaned and finished, some thin, elastic cord simply needs to be threaded through them and tied off. You can watch a time lapse video of Verdu constructing a robot here:
Verdu has a long background in sculpture having started with modeling clay as a child and moving on to major in Fine Arts and Sculpture with Official School of Ceramics in Madrid, where she spent two years studying Artistic Ceramics. She started her career as a graphic designer and a digital painter for book covers, before falling back into her first passion when she started to create her dolls, after being introduced to the art form by a friend.
Of course, she can’t photograph her dolls without spectacular props and backgrounds, which seems to be the best use for her 3D printer at the moment. If this amazing trellis archway that she designed, printed and painted is her first attempt at 3D modeling and 3D printing, then we haven’t even scratched the surface of what she’s going to be doing next.
You can find out more about Sonia Verdu’s stunning articulated dolls, and even commission her to make one for you over on her blog. You can download her Jointed Robot model over on Thingiverse here for free. And you can see more of her 3D printed Jointed Robot in action on this video:
