3D Printed 'Small Prophets' Homunculi Update

Halfway There, But More Work Than Expected

---

Things Are Never Easy...

Typically I started this project with the overly-optimistic thought that this would be a 'quick win'. The 3D model files for these three figures were free to download and ready to print, what could possibly go wrong? 😏 (A phrase that has come to haunt my whole model making careers!)

My wife - Sharon - was really taken by the BBC TV series 'Small Prophets' so I thought it would be nice to make here a set of the little magical entities for her desk at school. There would be very little to do other than print the Homunculi [Homunculi is the plural form of homunculus, referring to small artificial human or human-like beings.  Historically, the term described a miniature, fully formed human believed to inhabit germ cells (sperm or eggs) according to 16th-century preformationist theories, or an artificial dwarf created in a flask by an alchemist, a concept popularized by Paracelsus in the 1500s].

Magic Never Turns Out As You Expect It!

Surprise, surprise It wasn't that easy. The free 3D model files were very delicate sculpts and were probably better suited to resin 3D printing than my FDM filament printing. Just like a folklore story where summoning fairy folk never quite goes to plan and there are unexpected consequence, my dabbling in the mystic arts went decidedly wrong...

The models - once printed - were super fragile and many of the finer parts did not come out properly, so the models were either improperly printed or were so delicate that they broke during the removal of the 3D printing supports.😩

Above: Malformed at birth! An example of just how wrong this trio of prints went for me.

Above:  "We can rebuild him. We have the technology"

So, the upshot of this was that I ended up having to do extra work to rebuild and re-sculpt some of the malformed parts, meaning that this 'quick' job turned out to be more time consuming than I imagined (and had a knock on effect on my already busy model making schedule)! Oh dear.

The Irony of Unforeseen Consequences 

More work then, and yes I was a bit miffed as all this additional work was very inconvenient as I was already well behind on my schedule (as usual). But, to be honest I secretly love bringing a model making disaster back from the brink, it's something about not wanting to be bested and recovering the failed project.

And that was the case here, I really got into the unexpected sculpting work remaking the missing and broken parts using modelling putty and wire. In the end the resultant models didn't look too bad...

Above: After some initial repairs I at least got the figures standing again, but as the previous pictures showed there was still a lot of work to do replacing missing limbs.

What Next?

But that's not the end... As part of creating the homunculi I now have to source suitable jars to put them in AND think of a way to represent the liquid that the little creature evolve in. So, there will be a lot more head scratching ahead!

Above: A lot of work got me back to square one, but there was still a lot of sanding and fettling to do to get the figures looking 'finished'.

Above: How I imagined the finished product might look! (Which just goes to show that my imagination far exceeds my abilities as a modeller!)

Above: The next step - finding the right sized glass jars to put my little creatures in. There are plenty on Amazon, but getting exactly the right size is a little more challenging!

To Be Continued....