3D Printing

I Learned How to 3D Print a Drag Queen So You Don’t Have To

My name is Michael Molitch-Hou and this is my story. I tell it only so that you won’t make the same unfortunate mistakes that I have. And so that I can brag about the time that I 3D printed, and subsequently met, a famous drag queen. If you find yourself one day 3D printing a full-colour model for someone you love for the first time, please, follow these tips:

1. Don’t like anything. As soon as you start liking something, you get into trouble. My wife, Danielle, and I really like RuPaul’s Drag Race. If we had never liked it, I would never have gone down the long, arduous road of 3D printing a drag queen for her birthday. But, when we’d seen those talented performers competing to become America’s next drag superstar, how could we not fall in love with the show? Danielle’s been in love with drag forever, partially because her Aunt Mikey, growing up, was a drag queen. I only got interested in it after watching the show.  I was taken by the huge range of skills displayed by the show’s contestants, sewing elaborate, conceptual costumes to sing, dance and tell jokes in ways that best show off their “Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Talent.” I’ve never been more enthralled and invested in a competitive reality program before in my life. I even had a RuPaul suit made for me for my wedding day – not as an obsessive homage to the man, but because we love his suits and this one happened to be perfect for our colour-scheme.

3D Printing Industry rupaul suit
Suit by Klein Epstein and Parker in West Hollywood.

Danielle’s favorite drag queen is Manila Luzon, one of the stars of Season 3. After Danielle played the season for me, I could see why:  Manila’s vision of drag is a combination of pop culture and high fashion, imbued with such a joy and humor that her performances would even make Sad Keanu smile. For instance, when she returned for RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, Manila and her partner in the competition, Latrice Royale, donned Teletubby costumes, strapping iPads to their midsections to mimic the strange, British aliens. Manila’s final costume of the season, a couture version of Death from Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, sealed her in my mind as the best drag performer I’d seen. Moreover, it sealed my fate to 3D print her likeness for Danielle’s birthday almost a year later.

manila seventh seal

2. Don’t expect a $5 marketplace to be reliable. Last Christmas, I got Danielle a RuPaul doll – a Barbie-esque toy with packaging that reads “99% Plastic, 1% Woman” – but what I know she really would have loved was a Manila Luzon doll. Unfortunately, the world is a desert when it comes to Manila figurines. As I got more involved in 3D printing, I realized that the technology was perfect for fulfilling my wife’s dreams of a tiny Manila on her nightstand – as odd as that sounds. The only problem was that I have absolutely no CAD skills whatsoever, which meant that the only solution was Fiverr, “The world’s largest marketplace for services, starting at $5.”

fiverr 3D PrintingMy previous co-worker, Omar, aka “Supreme 3D”, introduced me to the site, the only place where you can find someone to “be the secret admirer they NEVER wanted” or “sing a depressing Happy Birthday as a mouse” for $5.  I found a talented CAD artist with the alias Dread Knight who agreed to take this picture of Manila Luzon and turn it into a 3D model.  If you ever get anything on Fiverr, you’ll soon learn that freelancers aren’t always the most reliable people. Dread Knight was clearly good at designing, but he had become so preoccupied with all his other projects that he missed my deadline. He apologized profusely, but, by the time Christmas rolled around, Dread Knight had no model for me.

3. Don’t use Photoshop CC to prepare files for 3D printing. The sad news had a silver lining. Just as I found out that there’d be no model for my wife for the holidays, I learned that RuPaul’s Drag Race: Battle of the Seasons, a live performance featuring all of our favorite queens, was coming to LA just before Danielle’s birthday. Not only that, but there would be a “Meet-N-Greet” before the show. I motivated Dread by telling him that, if we got it printed in time, I’d get to show the model he’d made to Manila herself.

And I think that worked. Dread Knight told me that he’d spent hours watching Manila’s make-up tutorials, to apply the virtual mascara and lipstick in CAD the same way she’d do it in real life.  He focused on the most minute aspects of the model, down to the details of her fingernails and eyelashes.

dread knight 3D model3D printing is still making its way into the mainstream, though, and Dread Knight had never modelled something for the technology before – something he’d warned me of in advance.  So, when he finally completed the virtual Manila, two weeks before the show, not only were some of her finer features too small for the full-colour printing process, but there was a lot of repairing that needed to be done.

I recently read Rachel’s post on a new Photoshop release that integrated new 3D printing options into the software, potentially repairing a print to send directly to Shapeways.  So, I figured Photoshop CC would do what I had no experience doing and fix the model for me.  Here’s what it came up with:

3D Printing photoshop 3D model

4. Don’t expect big service bureaus to hold your hand. There was no way I was going to print that muppet, so I tried uploading the original, more delicate model to Shapeways to see if it would print. Maybe they had some smart software to fix the weak spots or something.

As you might expect, the giant 3D printing service bureau refused to print it. I headed over to Sculpteo, Shapeways’ next biggest competitor, uploaded [Manila(18).obj + Manila(18).mtl].zip.  Everything seemed to check out, I could select the multi-colour printing option, change the size and pay with PayPal. So, I headed to my shopping cart to get my 4.5” Manila in the mail. I had finally reached the end of a trying journey, one week before the big event – only to get an email from Sculpteo the next day saying it wouldn’t print. There were too many weak spots in the model, thin walls that would break during the colour jet printing process. The site’s only suggestion was, “Try repairing your mesh manually and upload again.”

5. Don’t look beyond your own backyard. It was at this point that desperation started to sink in. As a man, ragged from Internet searches and long, sleepless nights wondering what the purpose of any of this was, I found myself ascending a metaphorical mountain to a metaphorical cliff from which to jump. Then, as if by some divinity, there was a messiah.

Just before the 3D Printer World Expo — six days before Drag Race — I looked into the vendors who’d be in attendance, service bureaus that might have colour 3D printing. I spun the wheel of destiny and chose one at random: 3D Rapid Prototyping, Inc. of Garden Grove, CA – about 15 minutes from our apartment. I uploaded the file Dread Knight had made, unrepaired and unmuppeted, closed my eyes and clicked “OK”.  That was all that I could do. If this didn’t work, I would have to end it altogether.

Three hours later, I received a response from Paul Craig:

Hi Michael,

I fixed the file and if you print with us there will be no charge for the repair.

The model would be $125.00 and we could have it as soon as Monday-Tuesday for you. The only caveat is that the earring and eye lashes you can plan on not making it through the process. The earring especially. We will be using the ProJet 660 Pro (formerly Z Corp ZPrinter 650) 24 bit color, 600 dpi resolution, 380,000 colours including black.

FYI, I fixed it in Magics a Materialise product. Good tool but it can’t do everything.

Screen shot below.

repair 3D Model 3D Printing

Regards,

Paul Craig

3D Rapid Prototyping, Inc.

7201 Garden Grove Blvd.

Suite A

Garden Grove, Ca. 92841

6. If you’re going to meet drag queens, tell your partner ahead of time. Now, I just had to trust Paul that it would get to me in time, which it did. Being right down the road from me, I got it by Tuesday, with the Meet-n-Greet and the big show happening on Thursday. It arrived and, after all I’d been through, it was beautiful. Not perfect, but what is?

I wrapped the 3D printed figurine in a silver box with the Meet-n-Greet tickets tucked just beneath the model. When Danielle got home from work on Thursday, pumped for what she thought was just a drag show, I had her open her present. She was stunned by Dread Knight’s work, but more in shock that she would get to meet all of her favourite queens, especially Manila. Then, it dawned on her: these are people who wear make-up for a living, painting professionally contoured lines to enhance stereotypically defined feminine features.  Danielle ran to the bathroom, yelling, “I gotta put my fake lashes on!”

7. Don’t act like a crazy person. We finally arrived at the show, filled with anticipation. Would we really get to meet our favorite queens? What would we say? What will it be like? Is any of this real?

There they all were: Alaska Thunderfuck, Willam, Sharon Needles, Ivy Winters, Carmen Carrera, Pandora Boxx, Detox Icunt, and Manila Luzon. After meeting each one, having them sign Danielle’s RuPaul doll, and snapping photos, we’d beat ourselves up for everything we said and did.

3D Printed rupaul Doll

“I forgot to tell Sharon that we named the stray cat by our old apartment after her!” Or, “I should have asked Alaska to sign the front of the RuPaul box.” Or, “Why do you think she said ‘Bye’ like that? Do you think she hated us?”

Then, it came time to meet Manila:

Manila-3D-Printing-Figurine-Mike-Danielle 2“My husband 3D printed this for my birthday!” were Danielle’s first words to her idol.

“Wow, you 3D printed this?” Manila asked.

“Yeah! How’d you know it was 3D printed?” I replied.

“Because she just said so.”

“You’re our favorite,” we both said in unison.

“I know. You have a creepy 3D-printed doll of me.”

“You should see what we have back at our house!”

We didn’t really have anything back at our house, except for our bearded dragon, Shanté (as in “Shantay You Stay”).  It was just a joke, but it was too late. We were crazy people. Would she get it?

She laughed! We’re not crazy! We’re just regular weird people that own a bearded dragon and 3D-print drag queens. And Manila told us to tag her in the photo of her with her doppelganger on Facebook!

The show was the best drag show we’d ever seen. On top of meeting all of our favorite members of RuPaul’s Drag Race (except for Raja, who wasn’t there, and Delta Werk, who we’d met and creeped out once before), the performers put out all of the stops. Ivy Winters proved that she is amazing at costume design; Detox proved that she was a damn good dancer; Alaska proved that she was really down to Earth and hilarious; and Manila proved that she was still the best drag queen out there.  We really couldn’t ask for anything more.

8. Don’t daydream about anything.  I had had this daydream that, upon showing Manila the statue, she’d want to sell it in her online store and at shows. She’d write me an email and I’d tell her that we could make even more realistic models. Dread Knight’s CAD skills were great, but if we actually scanned Manila with our Microsoft Kinect, we’d be able to 3D-print lifelike figures in any costume she dressed in.  So she’d come over, we’d spin her around in front of our Kinect and start up a business.  After repairing all of the models ourselves with Magics, we’d use Sculpteo’s batch printing service to get them printed in bulk. All of the other queens would be jealous and want their own, so we’d make theirs too.

As drag became more and more respected as the ultimate art form – for its ability to show the world that, as Ru says, “You’re born naked and the rest is drag” – we’d be recognized for doing our small part to help spread the movement.  And, maybe we’d earn ourselves enough money to get a house and a puppy and a kitty someday.

But, as fulfilling as that might be, it may never happen. So more important than any of those trifling fantasies is the fact that, despite all of the headaches, heartaches and toothaches, I’d given my wife something that showed how much I love her, how perfect I think she is. Something she’d remember for the rest of her life.

My name is Michael Molitch-Hou and this is my story …. So far!