Japan’s Attack of the Clones?
July 25, 2011 by dracs
When I came into the studio today Lloyd showed me something on Culture Japan that was such a mind-melter I felt I should share it with the rest of you. Japan's attempts at human cloning!
Yup, Clone Factory in Japan are doing human cloning, but not as you'd expect it. First we take a handy test subject.
Sit him in a chair with lots of fancy cameras around him.
Assemble a 3D image of him using the magical jiggery-pokery and what-not of computers.
Then print out the clone using plaster.
Now all that is left is to clean off the unwanted plaster.
And you should be left with your very own mini-me.
Pretty amazing, if slightly pointless, stuff eh?
This got me thinking, what if this technology was applied to the world of wargaming? In the future you might send off some pictures of yourself to a miniature company and a week later be the proud army of a whole army of 28mm you!
Send your clones storming over the battle field, let the last thing your enemies miniatures ever see be hundred of your face marching onwards!
Until that day comes, we should all be ever wary of Japan's attack of the clones!
lol, awesome if slightly creepy. Would be pretty fun to have your own little you clad in space marine power armour 🙂
we all need a 3D printer! ..they are even further ( if someone could tell me how to implement youtube videos on this side that would be great ! ) so for now just a link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHnMj6dxj4
oh just post the link ..its as easy as this …AWESOME !
the future for miniature manufacture…ppp done right?
Creepy indeed. The process is interesting though.
Hmm, for wargaming purposes, I think all models having the head of Al Pacino as Tony Montana would be more fun than my own ugly mug.
Got to be intimidating to the opponent that one.
50 marines shouting ‘say hello to my little friend’.
That or Jar Jar Binks, just to annoy everyone into making a mistake.
Yeah I could just see me shouting at my opponent “SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIENDS!!!”
I’ve seen this used before for 1/6th not-at-all-action-man military figures, and by the WWE for their tiny little John Cenas and Randy Ortons. I’d imagine its quite expensive for a one-off, but it would be freakin’ awesome to have your own mini you for RPGs or as your army’s commander 🙂
Thats a bit freaky. I think they need to make the scale of the heads a bit smaller, then it will look better.
That’s one of the coolest things I have ever seen 🙂
I bet a lot of mini companies will be worrying about this technology – why buy a model when I can print it? It’s an interesting subject for sure. Thanks for that guys 🙂
I think if you have the money to buy the shown 3D printer, you could just as well use it to buy EVERY miniature you like AND pay Jerome Otremba/Marike Reimers/Jeremy Bonamant/Ali McVey to paint them.
That way, you don´t waste energy with the printer, you pay someone´s income for a work that he/she loves and you have an awesome & unique collection.
BTW, some miniature companies use 3Dprinters to create their casting masters. See Spartan Games, Wargames Factory or Raging Heroes.
I still have to see a single digital model that even comes close to a great handmade miniature, though.
Nice ! No need to sculpt the head of your friend on a miniature for his birthday present anymore…
BoW Romain
So, Beasts of War have discovered 3D printing. Interesting…
I’ve actually been paying attention to this stuff for quite a few months now. It’s a great technology and almost certainly the way of the future, but it’s not quite ready for the minis industry yet. Firstly, the object is built up in layers which are about 0.1mm thick. It sounds small but you get a definite “ripple” effect on the finished item which isn’t obvious from looking at the videos. Small details are rounded-off and indistinct too. Secondly, although the coloured items look nice, the print head (I’m thinking of the Z Corp. printers specifically here) only have a resolution of 720dpi, which means very visible dots and very poor detail. My opinion is that 2500+ dpi will be required to print small details like eyes and so on with a reasonable amount of clarity. Incidentally, as far as I can remember the Z-Corp printers cost around £50,000 at the moment. They’re slow as heck at the moment too – several hours to do a few minis in a single run, I think.
I actually have a few 3d-printed minis and they’re rather lovely. I got them from Shapeways.com, and unfortunately they are not coloured. They also have a very heavy texture on them which will make painting a chore, and they’re fairly fragile. They run about £5 each for a normal 28mm scale figure. Prices depend very much on the amount of material used, it’s fairly expensive.
Having said all that though, it’s a virtual inevitability that these things are going to make it big in the next few years. As well as the advantages you get from having them pre-coloured, you have: no tooling costs; no mould lines; no assembly; no storing your moulds while you’re not using them; you can manufacture absolutely any model at any time; it’s not labour-intensive like resin or metal moulding, you can pretty much just turn the machine on, leave it running and go to bed; the scuplt can be designed without any consideration whatsoever to making a mould fit around it, etc etc…
What I think we’ll see in 3 or 4 years’ time is that there will be a couple of companies who’ve made it big on the back of this by being the first to market, and all the small companies who currently make only plastic or resin will be outsourcing their production to a few fulfilment houses who have paid the enormous outlay for some of these machines – and the whole process will be online.
For now, I suppose, we wait.
Derp! “Only plastic or resin” should have been “only metal or resin”. That’ll teach me not to proof read.
And would it have killed the developers to have added an “Edit comment” option?? =/
After a bit of researching into 3d printing i found this beutiful mini that is made to order on shapeways
http://www.shapeways.com/model/76451/
All i can say is i want one
done and done, cowboy kenny from heroic 28’s has a head made for him from custom minis (http://custom-minis.blogspot.com/)
custom minis has a deal going making custom shoulder pads you send them the symbol they 3d render it and send it off to the printers.
mhh most of the pictures are just photoshopwork, that is a little bit unprofessional.
A year ago I saw a video about a company which produced WOW characters with a 3d colourprinter for the costumers, which were willing to pay something about 100$ for their own character.
Image something like IG female commissar with head of actual woman.