Disney Fan Turns Himself into Big Hero 6’s Hiro Hamada with 3D Printed Costume

If you are a fan of Disney movies, then you are likely psyched for the November 7th release of Big Hero 6. The story is about a bond that forms between an inflatable robot known as Baymax and a robotics prodigy known has Hiro Hamada, who team with a bunch of other high tech heroes to form a team to take on a criminal plot.

If you have seen the previews for the movie, first released back in March, you may recall that Hiro uses a 3D printer to fabricate a custom red armor suit for his robot friend.

In the spirit of 3D printing, one video and graphic designer based in New York City, who has a keen liking of Disney characters, decided to use his MakerBot 3D printer, and various design tools to create his very own Hiro Hamada costume. Keith Lapinig, knew that he’d have his work cut out for him on this project but was inspired by the upcoming ‘Mickey’s Not-so-scary Halloween Party’ at Walt Disney World to get to work.

Painting the pieces

“I’m a huge Disney fan (my dream is actually to be the voice of a Disney character), and I was really excited for this upcoming Big Hero 6 film,” explained Lapinig to 3DPrint.com. “I thought it would be fun and a real challenge to try and make this costume even though I’ve never made anything so big with my 3D printer before.”

The entire project was based off of just two photos he had uncovered of Hiro Hamada prior to any movie preview clips being released. To make things even more complicated, Lapinig never had taken a 3D modelling or animation class before.

“I’m actually mainly a video/graphic designer. In college, I was a film editing major,” he explained. “Currently, I’m an Interactive Design Manager where I deal mainly with web designing, developing, video editing, and graphic design.”

Despite his lack of experience in this area, Lapinig pushed forward, learning to use Cinema 4D on his own, which he told us was a challenge, but he eventually modeled a costume consisting of 10 different pieces. Some of them were large, taking up the entire MakerBot build area, and requiring up to 13 hours to print with ABS filament, while others were smaller and had shorter print times. In total all 10 pieces took around 125 hours to fabricate. Once printed it was time to smooth the pieces out with a acetone gas bath, and sandpaper. Next came the painting which was even more challenging then learning to use the modeling software as Lapinig explained to us:

“I’ve always dealt with regular airbrush paints, but I decided to go for actual automotive sparkling paints this time to replicate the armor’s finish from the film. With Cinema 4D, a mistake didn’t cost anything but time. With painting, a mistake would cost another $20 in supplies.”

After over two months of modeling, printing, and post processing the costume, it was complete, and quite amazing as you can see from the videos and images within this article. As for Lapinig’s future plans, he is currently working on a prop from the Big Hero 6 film which should be done in a few weeks. Future images and videos of these projects will be posted on his portfolio website as well as his Youtube channel.

Let’s hear your thoughts on Lapinig’s 3D printed project within the Hiro Hamada 3D Printed Costume forum thread on 3DPB.com. Check out his video below showing of this incredible piece of work.