For the gift-giving season of Christmas in 2024, I designed and manufactured customized cow figurines. As my client already liked my existing 3D print figurine called "Tuxedo Pepe", we decided to make the cow mascot fit as a companion to it, reusing the top hat and the tuxedo body.
The cow was sculpted in zBrush, and once I and my client were satisfied with the design, I used Blender to split the 3D sculpt into 3D printable parts. To make the highest quality figurine possible I designed parts with a solid base surface, with minimal overhangs and glue interfaces. With proper clearances, while glue was used to ensure long term durability, the entire assembled figurine holds fast through friction alone.
As of 2024 I did not make use of multi-color printers, instead choosing to print colored parts separately and assemble them later. This method, while expensive in terms of upfront time investment, is much faster to print, and wastes nearly zero filament. Additionally, through the use of multiple 3D printers printing different parts simultaneously, production was phenomenally rapid.
In total, we decided to make 38 cow figurines for 2024. Each figurine weighed approximately 350 grams, meaning after all was said and done I had used around 15kg of filament, totaling around 350USD in just material cost alone. Good thing I buy in bulk!
