Title
Project Overview
This is my Toy Story 1 & 2 movie accurate Snake!
Materials & Tools
- 3D Printer with an AMS
- PLA Filament
- Labels
Build Process
Step 1: Gather Reference Images
Gathering a lot of reference images is always the first step! You can never have enough. Especially when it comes to Snake because he is only in a few scenes across Toy Story 1 & 2. What I found interesting was he has a different amount of body pieces in each movie. In Toy Story 1 it has 10 body pieces, and in Toy Story 2 he has 8. To cover both, I decided to make it with 10 pieces. I find most people prefer the original version, so I went with that. The pieces are removable though, so you can always remove two pieces and it will be TS2 accurate!
Step 2: Modeling
I modeled this entirely in Maya, which is a 3D modeling program. He was a relatively easy character to model, especially because 9 of his pieces are identical. The trickiest part of this is the articulations, which usually takes a few tries to get just right. If the parts are too loose it will just fall apart, and if they are too tight it won’t move at all or worse won’t even connect together.
Step 3: Print Prep & Printing
Printing Snake is relatively easy as far as 3D printing goes. He’s mostly one color, and because of that, I can print every piece at the same time, except his tongue. I just opt to print a ton of tongues at once every so often to save on time. Snake prints with basic print settings, so he’s a quick send to the printer. He takes 17.5 hours to print, so this is one that always runs overnight.
Step 4: Remove from printer & Cleanup parts
17.5 hours laters time to pop Snake off the printer! The support removal part of Snake is easy, but it is the most time consuming part by far. He is made of 13 pieces that need supports removed, so it can be a little tedious removing them. Also since all of those pieces move, it takes a bit more time making sure all of the articulations work correctly.
Step 5: Assembly
This is always the most stressful, but, an even more so rewarding step. It’s never wracking because he has so many joints to assemble that are thin which means they’re prone to breakage. I do always start with gluing the tongue into the bottom jaw the day before doing the main assembly. Super glue typically takes 24 hours to fully cure, and it’s much easier to glue in the tongue when the upper jaw isn’t attached yet. Once that is dry, the rest of the pieces all lock in with pins that hold him together. The last part is just applying his decals! 10 body decals and Snake is all done!
Final Thoughts
And that about does it for Snake. A pretty straight forward character to make, but one of the funnest to have with all his articulations!