Inkjet & Digital Printing

GAME ON! 3D PRINTING IS CHANGING THE WORLD OF SPECIAL EFFECTS

Thursday 22. May 2014 - Last week we participated in a two-day event called Game On. It's actually a series of events associated with the 10th annual Drogheda Arts Festival in Dogheda, Co Louth, Ireland, designed for young programmers and professionals involved in digital technologies.

The Dogheda Arts Festival is the result of an Artist in Residence programme with CoderDojo, Drogheda that has been in existence since September of 2013. Young programmers have had the opportunity to be mentored by artists, such as Vivienne Byrne, and professional programmers, all focused on the theme of ‘Real and Imagined Worlds.’ Together, they combined their collective creative and technical talents to create unique video games, art, sculpture, animations, music and stories that are inspired by the town of Dogheda.
Game On included workshops on Pixilation, Lightboxlab, Claymation and Phenakistoscope; Trail Games, which are computer games crated by CoderDojo Drogheda children; Tech Talks by renowned industry professionals, including Stephen Howell (Microsoft) on Minecrafting, Peter Redmond (Mechatrons) on Robotics, Tomm Moore (Cartoon Saloon) on Animation and Jason Lopes (Legacy Effects) on Special Effects; a creative digital technology networking event; and a professional digital arts masterclass about the continually-changing world of special effects in the film industry and the increasing role 3D printing plays in the development of those special effects. That’s where we came in.
The masterclass was run by Jason Lopes of Legacy Effects and Mcor co-founder and CEO, Dr. Conor MacCormack. The class was specifically designed for professionals working in the digital arts industry. It gave participants an insight into the changing world of special effects in the film industry and the increasing role of 3D printing in its development.
Attendees know well that in order to bring their film characters, avatars, props, scenery and sets to life, they often need finely detailed 3D models and prototypes. But creating film characters and avatars by hand is labor intensive, time consuming, costly and often inaccurate. Conor talked about 3D printing’s ability to quickly, accurately and more affordably transform CAD drawings and other widely available digital data into precisely detailed physical 3D models. Mcor’s unique True Colour 3D printing technology, in particular, creates those models in full, photorealistic colour, eliminating the tedious and time-consuming task of painting. Conor also discussed how Mcor 3D printers use common office copy paper as the build material, resulting in the industry’s lowest operating cost, 5%-20% of any other 3D printing technology. In the world of special effects, 3D printing makes the impossible possible.