Monday, December 23, 2024

Advent Calendar #6: 3D-Printed Animals from Crafts3Dcom

All of the advent calendars that I've looked at so far have been mass-produced items by big, well-established toy companies.  Those tend to be the calendars that are most relevant to the doll world.  However, I didn't want to let this entire series go by without featuring something a bit off the beaten path.

Since I've been thinking a lot about advent calendars over the last few months, I also hunted down a special calendar for each of my kids.  The one I chose for my eldest is from an Etsy store called Crafts3Dcom, and has a 3D printed dragon behind each door.  This concept was so appealing that I bought a second calendar to show off here on the blog:

Petra with dragons from a Crafts3Dcom advent calendar.

Crafts3Dcom doesn't have any advent calendars for sale right now, for obvious reasons, but when I was doing my shopping, they had two choices: a calendar with only dragons in it, and a hybrid calendar with both dragons and other animals.

As much as I love dragons, I thought it might be a bit more interesting for the blog to have an assortment of creatures, so I went with the hybrid option.

These calendars were listed for $58, which a lot, but they were on sale for $34.80 towards the end of November.  That's on the expensive side for this series, but still sounded like a good deal to me:


The calendar came in a shiny red cardboard box with a simple Christmas scene on the front, accompanied by a lot of text.

The back of the box has information about the materials, contents, manufacturer, and a choking warning:


The figures are printed in PLA, which is a bioplastic made out of plant-based materials.  That's pretty cool!

But not edible.
The Etsy information for Crafts3Dcom can be found at the bottom of the box:


With this style of boxed calendar, it's really important not to open one of the ends, because then you'll reveal an entire row of surprises.  Instead, a thin flap on the front of the box folds out to reveal the 24 perforated doors:


Aesthetically, this calendar isn't terrible, but it wouldn't be the centerpiece of my holiday decorations.  Certainly the Playmobil, Polly Pocket, and L.O.L. Surprise calendars are more fun to look at.

Each door has a simple picture of a winter or Christmas-themed item, and while the numbers aren't in order, there's also zero effort to conceal them:

No number hunting this time.
The first door has a picture of a Christmas tree sweater:


And it looks like we got a dragon as the very first surprise!  This is awesome because I was eager to see what these dragons are like:


Oh, he's so cool!  He has an iridescent coloring with a mix of purple, blue, and green:


This dragon (and all of the others in the calendar) are little babies with no back legs.  They're like dragon tadpoles...except that dragons aren't amphibians.

From the right side this guy looks mostly purple, but from the left side he's primarily green!

So pretty.
The layers of printed material are more obvious than what I expected based on my experience with the Makies, who are 3D printed dolls:


Maybe it's just that the dolls were sanded extensively and the dragons weren't?  Anyway, the texture doesn't bother me too much in this scale.

The dragon has eight interlocking segments, all of which are flat and textured on the bottom:


The segments give the dragon a bit of back-and-forth snakelike movement, which is fun.  And he can even balance upright on the spikes of his tail!

That's pretty ferocious!
You can see the size of these dragons compared to a standard Barbie like Petra in the cover shot, but here's another scale comparison:

3D dragon with a 1.25" micro Polly Pocket.
This little dragon is a great advent calendar treat!  I was so excited at this stage--and also curious about what other types of animal might be hiding inside.

The number two door is decorated with a green stocking:


I've always loved Christmas stockings.  As a kid, mine tended to be filled with things like Tic Tacs, Lifesavers candies, Cracker Jacks, little useful items like pencils or erasers, and then a big fresh orange in the toe.  And everything was concealed in wrapping paper, which added to the suspense.

Behind this stocking I found...


Another dragon!  Whoa.  I was expecting the dragons to alternate with other animals, but I was thrilled to see this one.  She's a gorgeous purple color:


She looks very similar to the first dragon, but they're actually two different molds, which is nice:

Related, but not identical.
I was half-wondering if I'd gotten an all-dragon calendar by mistake at this point, so I eagerly sought out door number three:


This is not a dragon, and I think it might be...could it be?


It's an axolotl!  With a Christmas hat:

What could be better?
This little one has five segments, and some wonderfully detailed external gills:


The axolotl is actually a bit bigger than the dragons--at least in the head.  And while the dragons' eyes are the same color as the rest of their bodies, the axolotl has large solid black eyes:


Things literally could not have been going better at this point.  I was beyond excited to see what was behind door number four:


I should mention here that while I tried to be very careful, the perforated doors on this calendar did not open cleanly.  There was a lot of ripping.  

And I see something black hiding behind this particular ripped door:


It's a penguin!


This three-segmented fellow is very cute.  However, his back is flat:

The lesser known flatback penguin.
I guess the flat back is because the printed shape has to have something to balance on?  I know very little about 3D printing, but I suppose they could get a more rounded shape by printing the two sides of the penguin separately and then attaching them?  That would probably add to the time needed to make each piece--and thereby add to the price.

Still, I love how this little guy can lean to either side because of those segment joints:

Just chillin'
Door number five is decorated with a smoking chimney:

Don't go down that one, Santa!
This looks like another dragon!


The colors on these dragons are so beautiful.  I love this pearlescent blue:


This dragon has a very different shape from the first two.  He's got intricate extensions on two of the segments near his head, and then big fish-like fins at the back of his tail:

He's almost like a sea dragon.
I want to say he's an ocean-themed dragon?  With coral-shaped protrusions on his head?  But those elaborate segments make him harder to move and pose than the others we've seen so far:


Okay!  Let's see what door number six is hiding.  I'm betting that it's not a dragon:


Definitely not a dragon!


It's a little blue octopus!

But wait, before I show you the octopus, I should mention that the construction of this calendar is good in the sense that the interior is all cardboard, so there's no peeking from an opened compartment into an adjacent unopened space:

No cheating allowed.
Now here's this little cutie:

She's adorable.
The octopus has eight little arms, as you'd expect, each with two segments.  So there's a lot of mobility!


And she can even balance on her little arms:


There are some vertical printing lines near this little one's mouth and eye, but I didn't notice them too much in person.

This calendar is great.  So far, with the first two dragons, the axolotl, and the octopus, I have a collection of four minis that I'd probably pay $20 for ($5 each seems reasonable).  The penguin and water dragon are good, too, they're just not my favorites, so I'd pay a bit less for them.  That means we're quickly getting to the point where the calendar is already worth what I paid.

That takes the pressure off of door number seven:


And, guess what?  It's a reindeer!


I said in my first advent calendar post that reindeer are one of my very favorites things about Christmas.  I just love them, and used to get lost in the beautiful elegance of the holiday reindeer models that decorated my house as a kid.

But this?  This is an odd reindeer:

What happened to his legs?
I mean he's cute, and he's obviously Rudolph, but he's not very elegant, is he?

Rudolph, with your legs cut off, you've been in my sleigh enough.
He's a stubby little reindeer with a flat underbelly:


And a large rump:


That's okay!  At least I got a reindeer.

Number eight is probably another dragon:


Yep!  And this one looks very colorful:


She has a very different mold than the other two, with a mix of colors that are matte rather than metallic:


This dragon has elaborate segments, but they don't interfere with her movement too much:


The decorations on her head and tail look like clover to me, so I'm thinking she's the plant or garden dragon:


Here's a closer look at the intricate tail:


I might have to find some way to add color and detail to the eyes on these dragons.  I love everything about them except for the blank eyes.

Overall, I'm enjoying the dragons the most, but I also like the suspense of wondering what type of animal will be in the non-dragon spaces.  Like perhaps door number nine?


It's green and lizard-like, but not a dragon:


It's a baby alligator!

Aw.
The print lines are highly visible on this little guy, but he's got a cute face and nice detail along his back:


At this point I was expecting number ten to be another dragon...


But it's not!


It's a little purple dinosaur:


She's a smiling triceratops, and I think she's sweet...even though her shape is very similar to that of the reindeer:


Several of these animals, especially the smaller ones, have little strings of plastic coming off their bodies.  These are pretty easy to scrape or pull off, but they can look a bit messy on first inspection.

Number eleven must be a dragon, right?


Nope!  It looks like a turtle:


It's an adorable little sea turtle:


This one's shell is pretty messy, but he's very cute, and I imagine that he's about the size of a real sea turtle baby:

Love him.
We've reached the halfway point already!


Could this be...a pony?


Even better!  It's a unicorn:


It's a funny little smiling unicorn.  But she has a print defect through the middle of her head, which is distracting.

She also has a winning smile:


And she reminds me of Kate Beaton's pony, for anyone who's familiar with The Princess and the Pony:

I own this plush and love it--despite the short legs and no neck.
The unicorn has the same stubby body design as the reindeer, but she's slightly smaller:


I hate to say it, and maybe this calendar has spoiled me with its dragons and axolotls, but I find the unicorn a tiny bit underwhelming.  And I typically *love* unicorns.

We're way overdue for another dragon at this point, too, so perhaps I'm just getting crabby.

Come on, number thirteen, give us some dragon action!


Oh, yeah!  Here we go:


This one looks very familiar.  She has the same body mold as the first dragon, but her coloring is different:


These two make a cute pair:


Door number fourteen is decorated with a candy cane:


I don't really like eating candy canes, but they're fun to look at.  Also, Santa drives around our neighborhood every year with the fire department, and he tosses candy canes to anyone who comes out to wave.  That always feels pretty special.

This candy cane was hiding another dragon!

Woo hoo!
This one looks like a fire dragon and is very fancy:


I love the mix of orange shades, and the flame-like horns on the head:

That's a fierce-looking dragon.
Okay, so at this point we've gotten six dragons and eight other kinds of animal, so the dragons are lagging behind, but it's pretty even.

I have no idea what to expect from door number fifteen:


It's definitely not a dragon:


It's a snowman, and I don't know quite what to think.  He's very strange:

The nose is cute, but those eyes make me want to run away.  Fast.
He's got some flecks of black mixed into the white of his head, and this looks messy:

Like dirty snow.
He's also flat in back, which is unrealistic for a snowman:

How would you roll those snowballs?
But I think it's his expression that bothers me the most, with those huge, vacant, forward-facing eyes.

Perfect for hunting prey.
To keep the size perspective in your head, this snowman, intimidating as he might look, is shorter than an L.O.L. Surprise doll:

You don't scare me, Mr. Snowman.
Anyway, I'm not sure he's a dud?  Some people might find him cute. But for me, this is the worst surprise so far.

Let's move on to door number sixteen, with its cozy-looking pair of green mittens:


The color of this little animal lights up the whole compartment with a chartreuse glow!


It's a chameleon!


She's very cool, with that electric green color and cute little smile:


The chameleon makes up for the snowman.  But it's time for another dragon, don't you think?


This is no dragon:


It's a little bumble bee:

Bzz.
The buggy eyes work pretty well for this fellow, and his tiny, useless-looking wings crack me up:


Now it must be dragon time, though.


Hurrah!  Here be a dragon:


This is a mold that we've seen before, but I love the mix of pinks and reds in the coloring:


Another matched set!


Door number nineteen is decorated with a generic piece of candy:


But has something very un-generic inside:


It's a little (flat) fox!

He's napping.
I like all of the discrete color sections in this guy.  That's not very common for these miniatures:


And he has six different segments, which gives him a lot of flexibility:


We're getting close to the end now, so I want to see some more dragons!

Maybe there's one behind door twenty's cheery Christmas tree?


This is most definitely not a dragon:


It's a guinea pig!


This guinea pig has reflective dots in her big eyes, which makes them look less spooky than the snowman's eyes:


She mostly lays flat against the ground, but the articulation in her hind limbs allows her to stand upright...exposing her very flat belly:


If you were curious, these animals are not scaled to each other at all.  In fact, the guinea pig is one of the largest animals that I've encountered so far.  She's way bigger than both the fox and the unicorn, while the bumble bee is about the same size as the fox and the unicorn:

Like soldiers crawling under barbed wire.
But, come on.  There are only four days left, and I need another dragon.  Maybe door twenty one, which has another Christmas tree decoration, will deliver:


Yes!  This looks like a dragon:


And it's a new mold, too!


This one, with her bright green color and stalk-like horns, looks like a grass dragon:


She's a great addition to my growing collection.

Door number twenty two has an adorable reindeer decoration on the front, which makes me think that this is going to be a good surprise:


It is!  It's another dragon!  And I love the color mix:


This one has a rose theme and is absolutely beautiful!


What a creative design:


This flower dragon is my favorite of the whole group so far, and would have made a wonderful treat for the final door.

My son also got a flower dragon in his calendar, and she lives in one of his plants:

Plant guardian.
In fact, I like the flower dragon so much, I'm tempted to order the larger version from Crafts3Dcom.  Look at how beautiful this one is:

Photo courtesy of Crafts3Dcom.
I might have already found the best surprise, but there are still two doors to open!

Door number twenty three has a floating teddy bear head decoration:


And there's another little dinosaur inside!


This one is a stegosaurus, and has the same basic body style as the triceratops (also the reindeer and the unicorn):


These two are going to be good friends, I think:


I prefer the triceratops for her slightly smaller eyes, though.  The eyes on that stegosaurus are uncomfortably large.

All right, this is it.  The final door:

What do you have for us, Santa?
And it's almost the 24th in real life!

This could be a dragon...


But it's a snake!


He's a wonderful mix of iridescent green colors, and has an impressive twenty segments!

His head is very realistic, too:


This guy reminds me of the segmented wooden snake that I had as a kid.   Something like this:


The segments give this type of model very realistic movement!

This little guy can even curl up for a nap:

That's pretty cute for a snake.
The snake is probably the most impressive toy in terms of movement, so he makes a nice finale.

So, all in all, there were eight dragons in this calendar:


Oh, wait. I forgot this one:

How could you forget me?
There were nine dragons in this calendar!


I was expecting more of a 50:50 split, so I'm a bit bummed that there weren't twelve dragons.  But the nine I got are really great, especially this one:

She's epic.
The next largest category was reptiles and amphibians.  There were seven of these:


The axolotl, snake, and sea turtle are standouts here.  The rest are cute, too, although the stegosaurus has freaky-big eyes.

There are only four mammals:


You'd think this would be my favorite category, but it's actually not.  All of them are fine (especially the fox, and the unicorn is growing on me), and would probably delight little kids, but I'm more excited about the exotic animals.

Like the invertebrates:


The octopus is adorable, and the bee makes me giggle.

Incidentally, Crafts3Dcom offers a large octopus, which is spectacular:

Photo courtesy of Crafts3Dcom.
There's only one bird in the mix:

A lil pengin.
And one psycho snowman:

My mother was a Home Depot skeleton.
Here's the whole group:


Because of their small size and flat bottoms, these animals are hard to pose for creative portraits, so I brought Petra back to play with her favorite baby dragon, who matches her outfit almost perfectly:

Dragons are my new favorite accessory.
I didn't peg Petra as a mother of dragons, but these two seem made for one another:

If only you had eyes.
Bottom line?  I haven't delved much into the world of 3D printing since I reviewed the Makies, and so it was fun to see what types of things are being created these days.  3D printing seems especially well-suited to advent calendars, because each little surprise can feel handmade and special, while being relatively easy to produce.

The number of miniatures that I'll probably keep around and display is the highest for this calendar than any of the others that I've opened.  I love all of the dragons, and I like my son's idea of displaying them in and around potted plants.  A few of them will end up living with Petra, too, obviously.  I'd have paid $35 for the dragons alone.  As a bonus, several of the other animals make cute little friends to have around the house or to give out as treats to visiting kids.

This calendar is not especially pretty to look at, and it got uglier with every door I opened, but each day was a true surprise: there were no pictures on the packaging that gave away what the miniatures would be.  And, frankly, real surprises like this are hard to find in the toy world.  Furthermore, the majority of the surprises were good ones, and so my excitement level as I opened all of the doors was a perfect ten.

Here are the basics:
Best toy: the rose dragon
Worst toy: the snowman
Number of good surprises: 23 (everything but that snowman)
Number of really good surprises: 18 (eight of the nine dragons, plus the most interesting and/or cute animals)
Excitement rating, out of 10: 10
Aesthetic rating, out of 10: 6

This was an incredibly fun calendar to open.  I like it as much as the Playmobil calendar, which was my previous favorite.  However, in this case I'm glad to have a bioplastics product with some environmental responsibility, and I'm also glad to have steered away from Amazon and Target for once.  Working with the smaller shops on Etsy can be more complicated, and shipping times are inevitably longer, but I find that it's almost always worth the extra effort.

4 comments:

  1. I haven't seen 3d print shops utilize advent calendars before, interesting use for their prints. I think the guinea pig or octopus might be my fav, but the colours on the rose dragon were very pretty.

    I'm curious how many of these were designed by the shop, and how many were purchased and licensed.

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    Replies
    1. I don't think any of them are original designs. I bought some of the exact shapes at a local fair, just in larger sizes. The idea of shrinking them and making a calendar is pretty cool though!

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  2. Pretty! Good value for the amount of toys. Love the dragons in the plants and posing with Petra.

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  3. To me, this is the most interesting advent calender- i am a 3D digital artist and Im always interested in seeing what the market for 3D prints is like. I dont have a printer myself but i have a shop for my digital models and i tried to make 12 models for the 12 days of christmas this december (although not all of them are done… turns out making 3 of them ball jointed dolls was a little ambitious)
    Personally i am not as interested in the dragons, i find them too busy looking, but i really liked the reptiles, especially the chameleon and snake. I agree with the other comment though, i dont think these are custom designs, i see these quite frequently at outdoor flea markets and such.
    Ill have to check out the post about the makies! I only started following this blog recently but ive already learned a lot i am interested in incorporating into my doll models, especially when it comes to balance and posing. I had never had a bjd before i got one printed at the library (not my original design but later got my own design printed too); i dont even have many dolls other than the ones ive made. I learned here that even the big headed anthro bunny bjd i have can stand on her own- i hadnt even thought to try bc the designers showed pics with a stand.
    The reason the backs are flat is indeed because they are flexible, no support, print in place figures. So they are printed right against the printbed and the joints are printed like a chain which permanently connects the moving pieces. The lack of support reduces waste and makes postprocessing easier. The dirty color on the snowman is contamination from the black, multi color printers usually share one nozzle and in order to switch have to flush the color out, but its sometimes imperfect. That also produces waste so thats probably why they didnt bother doing the eyes of the dragons in black (especially since they are already using fancy multicolor metallic filament, idk if that would also make color switching more difficult)

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