Tag Archives: barbie

Faire Play III

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Witness Faire Play III: a fully articulated, 3d printed, Barbie-compatible battle tardigrade.

wtf is a tardigrade?

The tardigrade, hereafter to be referred to as Brenda, is roughly the size of a domestic cat when printed at 100% scale, and comprises 61 separate pieces. Brenda has five body segments, eight articulated legs, and is fully poseable.

This time around Barbie eschews the full plate from the original Faire Play in exchange for a fantasy barbarian furkini. The furkini and boots are printed in NinjaFlex TPE, and are designed to fit a Barbie Made to Move doll. They’ll probably fit other dolls of similar size, but I haven’t tested them yet.

kneeling

Brenda’s saddle includes a mounting bracket for Barbie’s yoga mat because it’s always wise to warm up with some sun salutations before sack and pillage day.

saddle cu

Also included in but not pictured are a Mongol-style recurve bow and a three-headed flail.

I’ve set this playset up as a pay-what-you-like download with a $1 minimum. Yep, you can get the tardigrade, the furkini, a full compliment of Barbie-compatible weapons and armor, a saddle, and— AND! a 3D printable yoga mat for a BUCK, people.

Feel free to donate more than $1 if you like the project and would like to see more stuff like this exist in the future. Even if you don’t have a 3D printer it never hurts to throw an indie designer a bone. I’m just sayin.

Better yet: it’s Creative Commons licensed! You’re free to remix and redistribute this work as long as you credit Jim “Zheng3” Rodda as the original designer. Credits for the giants upon whose shoulders I’ve stood to create Faire Play III are listed in the .ZIP file.

Designing and executing Faire Play III was a yuuuge endeavor and a full description of it is beyond the scope of a single blog post. Watch this space for more photos and behind-the-scenes stories of how the latest and greatest in Barbie-compatible wargear came to pass.

UPDATE: Hello, SciFri Twitter followers! Here’s an extra couple of photos just for you guys! While you’re here you might want to check out SciFri Bingo in advance of tomorrow’s show.

feeding

Tardigrades LURVE themselves some garbanzo beans. It is known.

tree pose

And as always, #staytuned, my friends. I’ve got the Next Thing bubbling in the hopper already. See pics of embryonic Plutarch on Ye Olde Instagramme.

Lao Zheng out.

Faire Play Recurve Bow Now on Shapeways!

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Here it is, folks! I’ve redesigned the Faire Play recurve bow so that people without access to 3D printers can get one on Shapeways.

Just click here and Shapeways will happily print you a bow and quiver on one of their industrial-sized dream-making machines.

shapeways bow

shapeways quiver

In her youth, Barbara Millicent Roberts (“Barbie” to the world at large) passed through a phase where she adorned her handwritten i’s with a little heart instead of a dot. By the time she completed astronaut training she had outgrown such frippery, and besides it caused too much consternation among the top brass and crew-cut stiffs at Mission Control.

She retained a secret, unprofessional fondness for the motif, and every now and then, when she wasn’t vaccinating pets, transplanting hearts, or busting perps in back alleys, she’d sketch a heart or two on a cocktail napkin and wonder how her life would have been different if she’d remained a hearter of i’s.

just bow and quiver