College Student 3D Prints the Scariest Mask Ever… of Himself!

3D printing has been lending itself to the creation of all sorts of interesting costumes, masks, and accessories as of late. The ability to completely design a costume from the ground up has attracted many artists, designers, and creative minds into entering the realm of 3D printed fashion and cosplay.

We have seen masks created, intending to replicate characters from movies, TV shows, and video games, as well as completely unique pieces which have not been seen before. For one student at the University of Texas at Austin, named Joshua Orsburn, 3D printing allowed him to create one of the scariest masks we have ever seen — a mask of his own face. Not that his face is scary by any means, but the artistic methods he used created something so frightening that even a zombie would go running for the hills if it encountered someone wearing his creation.

“My general focus is usually more traditional print-making such as lithography, but I couldn’t leave school without giving 3D printing a chance,” Orsburn tells 3DPrint.com. “In my 3D fabrications course we were given an assignment to create an extension to the human body. My work usually revolves around the dichotomy of people’s personalities and thus chose to physically manifest these emotions into a singular mask.”

In order to fabricate the mask, Orsburn took several color scans of his own face and then used Rhino3D to “boolean the meshes” together. This allowed him to create a model which featured several different scans of his face onto the same mask.

“From there I scrapped the realistic color data and assigned an arbitrary flesh like uniform tone to it,” Orsburn tells us.

It was then off to 3D printing his creation. It took approximately 11 hours to print, using a gypsum (sandstone) 3D printer. Because prints that come off a gypsum-based 3D printer are very fragile, Orsburn finished it by adding acrylic paint and graphite, before dipping it in resin, to provide strength and a shiny finish.

As you can see, the final product is fascinating as well as quite scary — whether this was Orsburn’s intention or not. Regardless though, the job that he put forth was certainly an incredible one, and surely his professor was quite pleased with the work as well.

What do you think of Orsburn’s mask? Is this not the scariest thing you’ve ever seen? Discuss in the 3D Printed Mask of One’s Self forum thread on 3DPB.com.