How I made the Tardigrade
Product Link: https://printbabe.ca/products/punk-tardigrade
A week ago, when I posted The Croissant on Reddit, someone kindly commented that it looked like an abstract tardigrade. Then someone else mentioned that tardigrades have become somewhat popular among young science enthusiasts in the US. That got my brain spinning — what if I made a tardigrade?
I googled some image references. Honestly, they’re not exactly cute — at least not to me. But they do carry a certain spirit. These creatures can survive almost anything. They’re practically unkillable. They’re punk. Wait, that is the idea. I knew I’d love it — because deep inside myself I know I am a punk and it would be a super cool keychain.
I quickly sketched out a few rough concepts. Real tardigrades look a little creepy, but I figured they’d look much cuter in bright green, pink, or any bold color. Since I was going with a punk theme, I decided to add some spikes to give it an edge.
The modeling took quite some days. I went back and forth between sculpting and mesh editing. They both have some advantages. In the end, I used mesh editing to create the basic shape since it was faster for me. Once I was happy with the base shape, I switched to sculpting mode to fine-tune the details.
I wasn’t sure whether to go with a realistic or abstract design. In the end, I made both. I couldn’t predict which one people would prefer, and maybe they’d like the one I didn’t. So better keep both versions.
Printing brought a new set of challenges. I used a 0.4 mm nozzle with the 0.16 mm Optimal profile. The key issue was support. I set the top Z distance and bottom Z distance to 0.25 and 0.2, respectively. The pink filament is slightly smoother than the bright green one, even though both are PLA Basic. If the top Z distance is set to 0.3, there’s a chance the print might shift, so I tightened it to 0.25 to ensure the support made firmer contact with the object surface.
With that figured out, the final step was adjusting the size of the spikes on the tardigrade’s back. Normally, a 0.3 mm tolerance would work for fittings, but since I was modeling in Blender, getting everything super precise wasn’t easy. So I had to test several times to find the perfect fit.
However, it turned out that I still didn't like the feet, so I decided to redo it.
Finally the feet looked like this. It's cutter ( for some reason the previous ones just didn't look matching ) and easier for printing.
Finally after some rounds of tweaking print settings, the result just look great. I really fell in love with it the moment I see the complete version of them. Oh I made two variantions, one is without spikes, I call it Peace, the other one is with spikes, I call it Punk. I like to touch the Peach but the Punk reflects myself more. So I will carry both of them out on street!
Btw, I used the Snug for support in printing. I found I can easily pry it off without breaking the support, so it became a perfect display stand! Aha!
