Seriously, why isn’t she sold in stores? When I was a kid my sister would have loved a Barbie with a set of full plate armor! And yes, I would have as well. Heck, I kind of want one now, who am I kidding?
When maker and 3D printing blogger Jim Rodda wanted to 3D print something unique for his niece’s birthday he tried unsuccessfully to create rocket launchers for her My Little Pony’s, and while that would have been cool, his coffee fuelled change of course ended up being way cooler. He decided to create her a full set of medieval plate armor that would fit on her Barbie, and after some measurements and a lot of test prints the results were pretty great.
The armor was so successful that he decided to try and step it up and make her something a little more impressive and worthy of a battle queen. But a suit of armor for a legendary warrior like Brienne of Tarth isn’t cheap and the design would be time consuming. So Rodda turned to Kickstarter for help and managed to fund his project in about two weeks, adding several stretch goals and overshooting his $5,000 goal by another $1000. Recently he shared the results with us and they are, simply put, wonderful.
The armor was printed in a regal gold colored BuMat PLA on his original MakerBot Replicator 1. The level of detail that he managed to get out of it is insane, and you can really see how incredibly well designed it is. Look at the detail on those feathered tassets.
Of course the shield is also rather impressively detailed. The whole thing is really.
Depending on how much they backed the project, Rodda’s Kickstarter supporters received either the digital files of the armor, or Rodda offered to 3D print some sets of the armor out himself and mail them to some of the higher dollar backers. A few lucky backers even received custom designed shields with their own personalized heraldry on it. Take a look at his adorable stop motion Kickstarter video:
Rodda has a store on Shapeways where you can download or purchase some of the other cool things that he’s made. The armor isn’t up there yet, but he has made a Barbie sized bow and quiver available, so the rest will probably find their way up there eventually.
You can see more pictures of Rodda’s awesome 3D printed Medieval Barbie armor as well as dozens of other fantastic and creative 3D printing projects on his blog zheng3.com on Instagram.
