Incredible 3D Printed Ant-Man Helmet can be Printed Prior to the Release of Marvel’s Movie

Whether you are a fan of Marvel Comics or not, you have to give them credit for what they have been able to accomplish over the years. It seems as though every other blockbuster that hits the theaters has Marvel’s name written on it. Whether it’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America, Iron Man, or Thor, without a doubt they have become quite the powerhouse when it comes to movie production. This coming July will be no different, with the release of their latest film, Ant-Man.

The movie, which is being distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, is intended to be the 12th installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Starring Paul Rudd, the movie is sure to be quite the blockbuster hit, when it is released this Summer. In the meantime, while waiting for the movie to release, fans must satisfy their anticipation by watching the trailer, or if you are one man, designing and 3D printing a replica Ant-Man helmet.

Meet Stefanos Anagnostopoulos. His name is impressive, and his 3D design work even more so. Anagnostopoulos, in anticipation of the upcoming film, decided to create an incredible 3D printed Ant-Man helmet.

“From the day the first trailer was released, I knew I wanted to create something special for Ant-Man,” Anagnostopoulos tells 3DPrint.com. “I always loved the comics and thought this would be a good time to design something for it! I decided to make his mask and make it wearable.”

Anagnostopoulos challenged himself to design the entire thing in one single day, and he accomplished that goal by finishing it in just 10 hours flat. He spent about one hour of this time drawing sketches of the mask based on what he saw in the trailer and in other references he found on the internet. He then used 3D Studio Max for the majority of the design work. It was then off to ZBrush in order to DynaMesh the design.

“I then spent a few hours cutting up the mask in clever places so it would fit the bed of the printer,” he tells us. “I used mainly the Boolean operation in Rhino for the slicing up.”

It took an incredible 50 hours to completely print out all nine of the pieces, using his Zortrax M200 and MakerBot Replicator 2 3D printers. When everything was completely printed, Anagnostopoulos had to remove the little bit of support material, clean the parts up and then paint them with a black acrylic paint. This acted as the ‘base layer’, which when dry was painted over with a variation of different grey acrylic paints, that he layered on top of each other to create a brushed metallic look.

“I added the small colour details, such as the red stripes, using red acrylic paint,” says Anagnostopoulos. “Once the whole helmet was dry, I sprayed it using an acrylic paint sealer to finish it off.”

As you can see in the photos, the final results were quite spectacular. Better yet, anyone with a 3D printer can download the design files for free from MyMiniFactory and print them out themselves.

What do you think of this incredible 3D printed mask? Will you be attempting to 3D print one yourself? Discuss in the 3D Printed Ant-Man Mask forum thread on 3DPB.com. Check out the movie trailer for Ant-Man below, as well as some more images provided to us by Anagnostopoulos.