Titania

Concept

Meet Titania: the fierce warrior fairy queen. Descendant of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea, she protects her realm from invaders and demon spirits. She’s pictured here riding her green turtle through the night on her way to battle the multi-headed opossum king. Strong, beautiful, and determined, her gaze is focused forward on the epic battle to come.

The crux of this sculpt is the dynamic posing that practically flings the warrior queen to life. Inspired by La Figura Serpentinata (literally, serpentine figure), the queen’s limbs and torso twist in opposite directions, forming an almost spiral pose that affords interesting views from all angles. The posture is further accentuated in this sculpt by the dramatic and wild flow of the cloth and hair, and the lopsided positioning of the turtle on which the queen sits.

The sensational movement is juxtaposed against the calm, poised expression of the fairy queen. Her gaze speaks of unfettered confidence. She’s beautiful, but not for consumption. Her beauty is a functional beauty, derived from her power and strength...and her defined and sculpted muscles, a trait rarely glorified in female sculpts of the past.

By contrast, the hair, insect wings and flowing cloth are intentionally delicate and intricate, highlighting feats not easily accomplished in traditional sculpture but made possible by 3D printing.

Assembly

Pieces detailed below, color-coded in each frame.

Turtle assembly slide - 5 pieces total

• 1 piece: head (green)
• 1 piece: right flipper (blue)
• 1 piece: left flipper (blue)
• 1 piece: body (grey)
• 1 piece: base (yellow)

Titania body assembly slide - 6 pieces total

• 1 piece: upper body (grey)
• 1 piece: lower body (blue)
• 4 pieces: wings (orange)

Accessories & final assembly slide - 3 pieces total

• 1 piece: reins (purple)
• 2 pieces: spear (green)

Technical highlights

Turtle details slide

The turtle’s skin is hand-sculpted in ZBrush. The scales cover the skin, flowing with the wrinkles and accounting for the underlying bone structure.

Anatomy details slide

Titania’s figure was modeled in pose from a stick figure armature, rather than using the T-pose as a starting point. This was done deliberately to have dynamically moving muscles. Titania’s character is designed with full facial features, to better display in print.

Clothing details slide

The costume was initially draped with Marvelous Designer, and finished in ZBrush. The hair echos the folds and drama of the clothing, almost a character in and of itself.

Printer optimization

Bounding box slide

This model is designed to be a large print. The combined pieces are 25cm from flipper to flipper, and 22cm from the ground to the tip of the spear. Each piece is optimized to fit in the build volume of a Form 2 printer, which is 145 x 145 x 175mm. Recommend print settings: 50 micron layer or finer on a Form 2 to get all the detail in the print.

Engineering highlights

Cutaway engineering slides

The shells are keyed to fit into each other, with the keys tapered for an easy fit. Each large piece is hollowed out for cost considerations. The surface shape of the outer geometry is too irregular to be created using a simple extrude. Instead, each inside shell has a lower resolution than the outside shell, which also helps keep file sizes small. The inner shells also have selectively trimmed thin geometry, preventing interpenetrating shapes.

3D print

The sample 3D print was printed in white resin by CIDEAS using a 3D systems ProX 800 SLA printer at 100 micron layer. It was primed afterwards with grey spray paint.