Following Bust

Growing up, I was always interested in scary illusions. Objects or effects that make you blink twice always caught my attention and I decided to explore the interworkings of a bust with "eyes that follow you".

Step 1: Finding a face

For this bust, I thought it would be fun if I used my own face for this following bust. In order to get a sculpt of my face, I took a 3D scan of my head using an app called FaceApp that I found on the apple app store. This scan was able to be converted to an stl file, and was then forwarded to my email to use for the casing design later.

Step 2: Designing a Prototype

After some research, I noticed that the visual effect works best when the face of the bust is perfectly symmetrical. Unfortunately, my face is not perfectly symmetrical. In order to remedy this, I simply sliced the bust scan in half and mirrored my face. Then I created the basis for the effect which is the bust actually being an imprint. This was done by doing a boolean cut in a cube with a half-cylinder on top. I then printed this prototype, colored in the front flat face with a black expo marker so light would not bleed thru, and backlit the imprinted bust. The result was printed at 15% scale, and can be seen below.

Step 3: Designing a Casing

After confirming that the prototype works, I decided to design a 3D printed casing in Solidworks.This design was meant to make it look as if it belonged in a library or study and I could put it in my workspace once it was finished. I planned on painting this casing to look like wood.

Step 4: Printing a casing and initial post-processing

I then 3D printed the casing and the bust at 90% scale. I also painted a coating of XTC-3D on the facial cut in order to smooth out and remove the layer lines on the concaved bust.

Step 5: Painting and Final assembly

Once all the parts were printed and the frame was glued together and sanded, I used a painting technique I learned in order to give 3D printed parts a wood appearance. This process involved layering 3 different shades of brown ink pens onto a base and then spreading the ink with a paintbrush it generates a very believable wood-like finish. The painted assembly is shown below.

Step 6: Finished Effect

Finally, I tested the finished product, and I could not be happier with how the effect came out!