Martin Canales: Project 2 - 3D Modeling for Adornment (Shrek Hat)

 Concept/Inspiration

For my project, I decided to go with a Shrek hat because of my love for the Shrek series of movies. I wanted to model my hat after the Mickey Mouse ears hat you would see in the Disney theme park souvenir shops. Originally, I wanted to model and print the entire hat and ears but that would be too pricey for this project. Instead, I opted for just modeling and printing just the ears and gluing them to a hat. The hat would be painted green and have brown spots on it.

Reference Images

Original Concept

 

New/Final Concept

Process

The 3D Modeling process went through several phases. The first phase ended up being too simple: It was just a cylinder and a parabola attached to the top. It was also too tall and too thick to put on a hand. As a result, it would've been too expensive to print and too heavy to put on a hat. The second phase had the right idea, but ended up being too tall for my liking (almost 29 inches) which would also make the print costly. For the final phase, I modeled it close to what Shrek's ears as well as fixing the height to be 5 inches. In the model itself, I used the Chamfer command to smooth out the top of the model. I also used the mirror command to flip the model so I don't have to repeat the same process for the other ear. Another command I used is the Make Hole command so I could make a hole near the top of the ear to replicate the ear hole in Shrek's ears. 

Phase 1 of the model

Phase 2 of the model

Final Phase

No naked edges

Materials

In Keyshot, I made two renders. One without the hat and one with the hat. That way, I can give myself a visual idea on how the final model would be. I used the hard plastic material on the ears and painted it green. The green paint is also used for the one with the hat. Both Keyshot renders are put in a casual apartment environment to see how it would look in a casual looking lighting space.

Keyshot render without the hat

Keyshot render with the hat

For the actual printed model, I went to a printing place called 3D Dallas Printing. The person who works there (John) was a great guy and I was able to get the ears printed out within the next day for $20. And to actually put it on the hat, I bought a hat, paint, and brushes. All for almost $30 at Target. The first thing I did was cut out the front part of the hat, known as a visor. And with the help of my brother, I painted several layers on both the hat and the ears and letting the paint dry out. To stick the ears in the hat, we both used several layers of super glue to put them together. And after a few hours and attempts, the final product was a success!

Final Product