South Korean Design Student 3D Prints 982 Hours Worth of Incredible Fashion Designs on a MakerBot 3D Printer

3D printing is not just a national phenomenon by any means. This technology spans the globe, and it is becoming more and more difficult to point to particular regions of the world and say that the technology has not made its way there quite yet. South Korea is one of those nations where 3D printing is making quite a mark. While you don’t hear and see all that much in relation to this technology coming from this country, it certainly is gaining traction. With a gross domestic product of over $1.7 trillion and a population of over 50 million, South Korea presents ample opportunity for 3D printing to make quite a statement.

One school in the capital city of Seoul isn’t leaving any stone unturned when it comes to 3D printing. One student at the Hongik University graduate school has used this up-and-coming technology to create some incredible fashion designs that are unique in every sense of the word. Lee So Yeon, with the help of Joo Yun Sik, an engineer who graduated from Hongik University, and Joo June Sik, a photographer and 3D modeling specialist, created several 3D printed fashion designs that will, quite frankly, blow your mind.

“[These] designs utilize patterns expressed [in] organic form from nature,” Joo June Sik tells 3DPrint.com. “As we wanted to illustrate this complicated pattern accurately, we selected a 3D printer.”

More specifically, the team used a MakerBot Replicator 2 3D printer, and the entire process required 982 full hours of print time, which equates to almost 41 entire days. The project, which was started on September 25, 2014, just finished up yesterday (November 10). Some of the designs are created to mimic differnt plants, flowers, and fruit. For example, one of these fashion pieces is designed after the rose motif, utilizing details from this flower.

One design depicts a vine, thorns, and barbed wire fencing, while another uses the shape of ivy leaves featuring a double layer pattern. All of the patterns were created by Lee So Yeon, although the others helped in the conversion to 3D files and ultimately the printing on the MakerBot 3D printer. The design, modeling and printing included several software packages such as Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk Maya, netfabb, MakerBot Desktop, and simplify3D.

Once printed, the different parts needed to be assembled, and then they were painted. The designs are printed using a flexible filament, which allows for the bending and contouring with the wearer’s body. The end results are on display from now until November 14 at Hongik University, and the exhibit is titled “Naturalistic Patterns Costume Design.”

What do you think about these incredible fashion designs? Discuss in the South Korean 3D Printed Fashion forum thread on 3DPB.com. Take a look at some more photos below.