Wonderland

Mattel's $300 3D printer for Kids

Remember that Autodesk-Mattel announcement of nearly a year ago? The fruit has ripened, rather beautifully.

Here's Mattel's ThingMaker, a $300 toymaking desktop factory. The first kid-centric 3D printer to properly make it to market.

Though it's named Mattel's ThingMaker, the product looks to have a pretty straightforward, Autodesk-centric genealogy. The machine seems to be a variant of traditional desktop filament 3DP (with a nice moulded casing); Autodesk has lots of recent machine-building XP via Autodesk's Ember. The app is the grandchild of Modibot and Modio, which was bought by Autodesk last year. Looks like a pretty easy-to-broker deal, then, that ;-)

Hasbro's Easy-Bake Oven was launched in the 60s, and is still super popular, despite only making cake and cookies (OK maybe that's the popularity). This machine, however - and especially its future descendants - will be able to bake all kinds of interesting and on-demand toys. Can't wait to see where this goes.

3D printed retro computers

Adorbs, or what? 

I can tell you, most of 'em won't come off the printer looking like that: there will be screen stickering going on, but still. Cayoot.

 

Makies FabLab is live...

After many months of development alongside (and you know how difficult that is) Makies going into Selfridges, and ramping up for Xmas delivery, and various in-store apps, and STUFF, we are aliiiiiiive!

And it's just the beginning. We decided a while back that we wanted Makies FabLab to be an iterative, growing thing; something that we would launch early and expand upon on a regular basis.

We did this with our toys - when they went live, they were bone white, weird looking, and £100. It was horrible! But we stuck with it, and iterating with our customers means Makies are looking pretty happy right now.

(Yep, she's 3D printed!)

So here we are... Makies FabLab is a fashion game, targeted at 8-80. It's got a massive focus on creativity: while most fashion dolls are mass produced passive things, we wanted ours to be little individuals, who encourage creative hands-on making.

We've blended Resource Management with Dress Up, so far, to produce a lightly educational clothes-making game: growing materials through to patterning cloth and fulfilling orders. Next steps: player-to-player shops, if that's what our community ask for. Android. More things to create.

Would you help us?

We have fantastic 5* reviews so far on the AppStore, but as you know, absolutely the more the merrier. It's the currency of now, that, and we have a very limited window (presumably!) of being on the launch page under Best New Games (thanks Apple!). 

The game's here: if you're willing, please play, rate, review, share, for great justice heartfelt gratitude. <3

Free, print-your-own Tower Defence game, looks fun!

Print your own weapons (siege engines), defence walls and goal flags, add some rubber bands, choose your ammunition (pennies look lethal, mind), and LET FLY!

It's called Seej and the clever maker's site is here.

I'm totally printing my version in Rainbow from Faberdashery.

(via Hackaday)

Modded Makie: "Intergalactic jewel thief, magpie and generally naughty person, Higi M'Wah"

Posting stuff that I'm involved in here, so Disclaimer etc and apols etc, but I couldn't pass this one up: Kaitan, a Makies owner, maker, modder and forum regular, posted his latest creation a few days ago, and she's pretty darn amazing. And the first Makie to have scales.

Apparently done using a Hobbycraft net washing bag, and a sponge, and ... maker magic ...

Neat, huh? Nice one, Kaitan!

3D Printing: Frankensteining Friends

Cory has to do a signing this Saturday for his and Charlie's new book, but Charlie sadly can't be present.

Cory's solution: sugru Charlie's Makerbot-scanned head onto a net-downloaded Warhammer Space Marine.

Result!

Sioux's Makie Face-up

Makie-friend Sioux the Moo (pirate party queen, BJD faceup artist and all-round good nerd) did us a faceup on a spare Makie head. It's a bit jawdropping.

She's documented her working on the Makies forum, plus posted pics in progress on her flickrstream.

MAKIES is alpha ...

This is why I've been so ridiculously silent around here for so long: on Friday, we put MAKIES into open alpha:

MAKIES is an action doll creator: a player/customer can design their own action doll - features, hair, clothes and everything - & we then 3D print it uniquely to them, build & dress it, and send on to them within 3 weeks of ordering.

There's more to come, too: the avatar will be able to unlock collectibles for the action doll. In the future, the action doll will be able to do the same for the avatar, using clever bits of electronica \o/.

So here we are in May, in open alpha (it's the new closed beta, only scarier :-))

Which means people will see all the string and sellotape, but everyone can also pitch in with suggestions at an early stage, too. During alpha, the doll is £99, including an outfit and taxes.

For beta, we'll have cheaper and more expensive versions available, playing with complexity of tailoring and size of print, etc. Tablet apps, too, and lastly, the all-important full battery of toy safety tests (totally confident on that last one - the doll's already passed a full series, but we still need to do USA and Japan ones too, etc. It just takes time).

3D printing! It's a future! :D

makie.me

 

The Replicator's playset characters music video

Have a look at this: Playmobil/LEGO-esque playset characters, 3D printed on a MakerBot Industries Replicator, acting out a little story set to music:

This all new stop-animation music video was made with Michael Curry’s playset characters and a number of other MakerBot-made pieces! The princesses story was written by MakerBot CEO and co-founder Bre Pettis and the song was written and performed by local Brooklyn musicians Scary Car (Bryan Scary and Giulio Carmassi).

<3

(via Makerbot)

MineToys

This was somewhat predictable ;-)

Unofficial, it seems: printed via Shapeways, using their "sandstone" (a.k.a. zCorp prints) material. Super fragile is zCorp usually, but you can soak it in superglue solution for toughness, if you felt so inclined.