Alizarin Crimson

Alizarin Crimson

Alizarin Crimson is a hunter. 

He lives in a swamp, dark, hot, humid & full of life. The swamp gets on the verge of boiling 3 times a day and the process creates bubbles that merge from the surface of the swamp and while they form their shape, they collect all kind of residue that exists in the swamp. Than, the bubbles detach from the water surface and start raising up. That is where Alizarin acts. He sits on a branch of a tree, just above the swamp . when the bubble reaches his height, he jumps towards it, but without leaving the tree. He just uses his one leg as a leverage and his extremely long sticky tongue to reach the bubble & fully swallow it before it blows.

I created Alizarin many years ago (maybe 30) as an Industrial design student in a rendering course (with markers & pencils on paper). He existed as a drawing for many years. I was always very fond of him.

A while ago, I moved to London &  finally bought my 1st 3D printer, (Taz 6) & started to learn Blender. When I saw this competition I decided to challenge myself & revive Alizarin as a 3D creature. Unfortunately, the original drawing was left back home and I had no picture of it, so I had to reinvent him from my memory....The challenge became harder after the 1st test  print- when I thought it will be fun to actually create his joints & be able to change his position. So, I created a tunnel in all 3 parts & connected them together with a strong  "hat elastic"-which can be fun with the transparent ABS if it's  coloured.

There is still a lot to with Alizarin until he becomes perfect, but my blender/printing abilities have definitely increased by the process.

Technical:-

I used  Transparent  ABS from Filamentum

I printed each part separately, after trying to print all the parts together and had layer shifting problems.

Print settings: Layer height 0.2 / Shell thickness 1mm / fill density 20% / support type- touching build plate / print temp. 240 / bed temp. 110

Assembly instructions: -

Use an elastic round cord, 1-2 mm. push it through the head on one of the holes. It will come out on the side of the tongue. turn it around the upper part of the tongue and push it back to the2nd hole.

you will now have 2 equal sides of the cord, holding the head. push the through the upper leg, starting from the sphere side.

Now, push one side of the cord through the lower leg's sphere hole, place the 2 bone of the upper leg on top of this sphere and tie very strongly the cord. Gently push the tie to the hole in the sphere to hide it.