3D-Printed Whale Skeleton for Whale Fall Diorama

[MudpupWaterdog]

A while ago, I posted here about an Etsy seller offering 3D-printed whale skeletons for adding whale falls to home aquaria. I had thought about getting one, but now I'm glad that I didn't because in the meantime my dad bought his own 3D printer to mess around with (oh, to be retired). So bought a digital model online (for about $3) and printed my own.

Here are some early photos of it printing:



And fresh from the printer:


You'll note my two big early mistakes: I should have printed in black plastic to better make the colors pop over the black primer, and I glued the lower jaw on upside down (which I'm told can be fixed with a hair dryer).



I then gave it a few layers of paint: a heavy coat of black primer, a lighter coat of grey Krylon spraypaint, then an overall dry-brush of blue-grey, a lighter drybrush of light grey, highlights in white, and then a wash of half grey and half flesh tone in the recesses, such as between vertebrae, to add depth and look a bit like there's still some meat on those bones.




Now, I'll eventually put together a more permanent diorama to base it on, but here are some shots that I got by just playing around with lighting:




And a feast for some (VERY out of scale) benthic denizens:




The isopods look so out of scale. Perhaps the whale is a real small juvenile and these isopods are some yet-undiscovered massive species. Or maybe I should just get smaller isopods and print a larger whale. I'm using the eel and the crab from the Safari cave toob as proxies until I can get the Colorata deep sea creatures set on my next Japan trip.

[bmathison1972]

Spectacular! There are a couple Kaiyodo isopods that are smaller than these shown here!

[Saarlooswolfhound]

Even with the "mistakes" this is amazing! Wonderful job and a great idea. I'd love to get a 3D printer (and retire) someday...

[NSD Bashe]

That is an incredible display, that skeleton looks so cool!  I can't promise it's in scale exactly but I do recommend the Kaiyodo tube worms if you don't have them