Time relevant projects are always interesting to me because they keep me to a timeline and finish the project while it's still interesting to share. This is what happened when a friend shared a picture of some 3d printed fossils from the Nintendo game, Animal Crossing: New Horizons. As soon as I saw the print I knew I had to make it and jumped right on Google to find the model. There were a lot out there, some better than others, but the best I could find (and the one from the post I first saw) was this one created by DNA Design. They modeled both a solid and hollow fossil that could be a storage box. I downloaded the storage box version but had a different ideas for it.
This print was the first time I started messing with slicer settings to help both speed up and improve the print quality. In more vertical lines of the print I could tell the printer to lay down less filament and take bigger passes to speed up. While on slopes I could slow down and lay thinner lines down giving a better look that's not stepped and meaning there's less cleanup work to do.
With the print quickly done it was a easy enough time to primer/filler and sand down the part. Coming from a video game with simplistic graphics made for quick cleanup work on such a low poly object. Taking a look at the airbrush paints I had on hand I picked close enough colors and got the model finished up pretty fast, within a week!
One part of 3d prints which I usually like is how light they are, being hollow plastic means it's less material/cost. All good things but this was supposed to be a fossil of some prehistoric creature, so I wanted some weight behind the model. After a quick trip to a local hardware store I found a box of screws that I could cram into the fossil to give some good weight for as cheap as possible. Not wanting them all rattling around 2 part resin was poured in with them to both give more weight and lock everything in place. After that was gluing the small parts together and the lid on top.
Going off an idea I saw online I picked up some fine felt to put on the base of the fossil. I 3d printed a negative of the bottom that I could use as a stencil to cut out the fabric. It was self adhesive and super easy to put all together.
Curious about different scales (and having extra resin that would just dry up) I tried modeling up 2 more fossils one twice the size and the other half the size compared to the original print. These were just as easy to print and finish with different painting types. I bought a bigger box of roofing nails for the large model and used some existing washers for the smaller fossil. All 3 sizes put together with different colors give a nice contrasting look between them all and the weight of each makes them one of the first projects I'm really proud to show off!
