Froggy: the 3D printed ball-jointed frog doll

thingiverse

I created my first ball-jointed doll. I've always been intrigued by these dolls, yet shocked by their high prices. Sonia Verdu's stunning Robotica caught my eye when she uploaded it; this beautiful piece of art inspired me to design my own 3D printed doll, Froggy. Although Froggy is not a direct adaptation of her work, I must give credit where credit is due – Sonia's creations motivated me to take the plunge and develop this unique frog design, making the process much more efficient than it would have been without her examples to draw from. Back in February, I created a prototype of Froggy, which received positive feedback after taking two prints to MRRF. During my trip to Chicago, where I visited my cousin and his family, my nieces offered insightful suggestions for improving Froggy's design. Once back home, I temporarily set aside working on Froggy while I focused on other projects, but eventually returned to him with a new approach. To refine the design of Froggy, I made the following adjustments: 1) Since people tend to pose dolls in human-like postures if they resemble humans at all, I altered Froggy's proportions and movements to give them a more humanoid appearance. As a result, he can now sit up and stand by himself, with his head twisted and angled like a person's. 2) Inspired by my mum's suggestion of movable eyes, I discovered that this feature could indeed be implemented. To my delight, it worked perfectly! 3) He boasts jointed and posable fingers, showcasing one of the many intricacies that make Froggy so unique – although making this particular part more challenging for myself was a conscious decision. Printing and assembling Froggy is not an easy task; however, I thoroughly enjoyed crafting him. You can find comprehensive instructions on printing and assembling Froggy here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Froggy-The-3D-printed-ball-jointed-frog-doll/. Note that Froggy is covered under a non-commercial license. If you plan to use him for commercial purposes, please reach out to me beforehand. Important notes: The missing file 'chest.stl' has now been uploaded; apologies for any confusion this might have caused. The orientation of 'eyeball_pupil.stl' has been corrected and replaced with the updated version. It was suggested that I combine and decimate the finger files. You can print each finger separately now, which should significantly reduce the time required for slicing. A revised version of 'finger_middle.stl' has been uploaded due to issues it caused with Simplify3D. Read Froggy's instructions here: http://www.southquay3d.com/index.php?route=information/information&information_id=13