I'm looking through photos of Navajo blankets right now for a 3D-printing project, and am starting to think that they were the 8-bit pixel art of their day.

The project is this flute, but since it looks incredibly plain (and won't even have a nice wood-grain when it's finished, like traditionally-crafted Navajo flutes) which really there's no excuse for on a 3D-printed model, I'm going to digitally engrave it in Blender with a sleeve-like pattern inspired by those glitzy blankets!

I've also returned to this piece: and am refining it for 3D-printing. I was successfully able to bump it from about 5,000 triangle-faces (shown) to something over 200,000 faces while actually improving its visible quality (smoother surfaces, but still crisp edges where necessary, and some nice subtle, curvy beveling), which brings it to a level comparable to a 3D-scanned museum piece judging by what I saw available for download from the Sketchfab community. (Museum pieces 3D-scanned by universities seemed to average between 200K - 500K triangles. At least, on there.) I'm trying to learn how to give my Morgul Blade a rough pitted surface texture like sand-forged steel to better match the film prop. Not sure how to do that yet, so it's a stalled project yet again. I'll bean away at it as I keep learning more about Blender.

I'm also revving-up to give the same treatment to this old project:

Mature Content

I think the Dragonslayer has been tackled by other 3D-print-artists before------however, when I created that nice 8,000 x 8,000 texture, I interpreted the manga artwork differently from everyone else IMO, and I'd like to turn those texture details into real, tangible details that would be too small and too numerous to ever conceivably papercraft. Primarily, that rough texture in black shown here: which looks to me like the smith decoratively pitted the iron it with a punch-die. That nice texture is my own creation----my own interpretation of the manga's constant use of vague cross-hatch marks in the center of the blade. But I'll be darned if it isn't an epiphany in the translation from manga-action-sketch to ultra-HD; now imagine 3D-printing that!

I ordered my brother's and my second & third rolls of 3D-printer filament ever today, and they should arrive by tomorrow!! I'm really excited, because both spools are blue-glow-in-the-dark pigmented! First up will be some tiny, tiny test-prints just to familiarize myself with the characteristics/nuances of each. Both are PLA type plastic, but the customer reviews on one said that it seemed "softer" than other PLAs, which might gum-up the 3D-printer (ours is a $160 Monoprice Mini-Delta) or result in structural weakness of thin printed objects. I might start-off with IronQ's "Digimon" Crest of Friendship; my inner child is going nuts. Once I'm nice'n comfy, I will attempt to print this wolf skull 3D-scanned by Oregon State University, RobSoundtrack's 12-hole ocarina remix, and alex_belov's Native American Sparrow-Hawk flute. Fun stuff, and maybe I'll get a couple of nifty musical instruments out of it----and FINALLY learn how to play one!

There is, also, my own Altean Spork 3D-model....
I think I'll save that one for later......