The project
Produced as a series of seven for an event, this award takes its form from Brazilian Carnival, a plumed mask rising from a pedestal. The client arrived with an AI generated concept image rather than a design, which set the starting point for the whole job.
The approach
A generated image is a picture, not a model. Nothing in it is dimensioned, symmetrical, or manufacturable, so the award was rebuilt from scratch in CAD, interpreting the image into a form that could actually be printed, finished and stood upright. The second decision was weight. A 3D printed award is hollow and light, and picking one up that feels like a toy undermines everything else about it, so an internal chamber was designed in to carry ballast.
How it was made
The award is 3D printed in PETG, with the mask and its pedestal printed as a single piece so there is no join between them, standing around 20 cm tall. A small concrete block sits inside a sealed internal chamber, giving the finished piece the heft of something cast rather than printed. The printed surface was then taken through several stages of filler, filler primer and sanding until no layer lines remained, before the metallic gold finish went on over the top.
Where the same approach works
Most of the cost of a convincing metallic finish on a 3D printed part is in the preparation rather than the paint. Layer lines will telegraph through any coating, so the filling and sanding is the actual work and the paint is only the last step. The same approach suits event awards, presentation pieces, and any printed object that has to pass as cast or machined metal when someone picks it up.
