3D printing is increasingly gaining momentum in movies and series: Ocean’s 8, Hotel Artemis… and now SuperMansion, an American stop-motion animated comedy television series which tell the stories of a superhero group that is led by the aging superhero Titanium Rex.
The production of the comedy differs from other series. Instead of choosing 2D animated content like most studios do, most of the series’ character have been manufactured using a 3D printer in order to meet the budget, deadlines and quality requirements.
“We have 3D printed a large majority of the show,” said Kei Chong, the head of the Digital Design Department at Stoopid Buddy. “Pretty much most of what you see on a lot of the human characters is 3D printed — except for the fabric.”
We also heard that 3D printing helps the studio to achieve other productions such as “Robot Chicken”, another stop-motion show on television, “Buddy Thunderstruck,” a kids’ series on Netflix, and “The Grand Slams” web series for Denny’s, the family restaurant chain.
Why integrate 3D printing into the fabrication pipeline?
Due to the aforementioned arguments, the Stoodio needed to ensure interchangeable character hands and features fit on the small parts that are filmed. Therefore, they chose EnvisionTEC’s Perfactory 4 DSP XL to deliver surface finish and XY accuracy of 50 microns.
In terms of materials, they used a Pro Gray resin which people surely know as R5 Gray.
“Sometimes we do characters with things like really fine crow feet around the eyes or hair detail and scales, things like that,” Chong explained. “R5 Gray has served our purposes for both getting that really beautiful amount of detail but then also lasting throughout the stop-motion automation process.”
Season 3 of SuperMansion has been launched last month on Sony Crackle. On Aug. 16, Sony is also slated to debut “SuperMansion: Summer Vacation Special.”
If 3D printing is a tool that enable storytellers to quickly share their vision, we still wonder how they make those 3D Printed characters animated for the show. #TobeContinued
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