Michelobeo Custom Sculpture

Sean Dietrich is a widely known traditional artist who tours the country selling his original and reproduction art. He creates trippy artwork with counter-culture subject matter and adult themes. In search of a new product for his clients, he came to us to create a 3 dimensional object that was part art and part toy. We paired our digital skills with Sean’s traditional skills to create a customizable sculpture of one of his iconic characters, Michelobeo.

We started with the technical illustration above, provided by Sean. Scale was key to the project as Sean wanted a finished piece that is small but with a substantial feel so his fans could walk away from the booth with something hefty in hand. Together we decided that the final sculpture parts should be cast resin for the weight, ease of assembly, and ease of painting.

The first 3D modeling pass was created in Maya. Sean’s initial sketch was invaluable to creating the digital version, as we were able to quickly create the forms without much guess work. Three quarter views were adjusted to mesh with the sketches and some minor scaling adjustments were made to the gun turrets, the orb details, and the “patch” shapes so they print and cast well. There were several iterations of the shapes before taking the model to the next step.

Once the digital model was agreed upon, the draft model moved into Inventor and a 3D printed prototype is made. The same 3D prototype is used to create the molds to cast the final product. There are 2 molds for this sculpt – one for the head and neck, then a second for the saucer portion.

We created a two part mold for each half of the model in silicon rubber for it’s strength in casting many pieces. The saucer section has a smooth underside to ensure that the final piece sits flat on a table or shelf. The head mold has an additional stem to seat it in the center of the saucer section.

Sean opted to have the cast pieces delivered unfinished and unpainted so he could offer them with individual, commissioned paint jobs or paint them as an idea struck. We delivered 15 of the final sets. Sean featured videos of the painting process and some of the final paints on his Instagram feed and we posted some of them in this page.

Contact us for more details if you are interested in learning more.