Lars Anderson is the founder of Arty Lobster and a member of Shapeways Crew.
My name is Lars Andersen, and I am the founder of Arty Lobster, the largest company specializing in accurate 3D pet sculptures in the world. Our modelers covert a photo of a favorite pet and convert it to a life-like 3D model, which is then 3D printed in full color sandstone.
Max by Arty Lobster
At Arty Lobster, we love pets. It is brilliant to see how our customers react when they see a realistic sculpture of their dog or cat. My background is in (2D) printing customized products, and I could see that 3D printing pet sculptures, with the challenges of fur and modeling, seemed like a great challenge
Real life Max
Arty Lobster is completely dependent on excellent 3D printing capability. As the company has grown we made a strategic decision to initially invest in strong in-house modeling capability, but not to purchase our own 3D printer. 3D print technology moves so fast, and full colour printers are fairly expensive, so we were happy to outsource this. Arty Lobster looked at both local (London, UK) and remote 3D printing options, and we chose Shapeways for speed, choice of materials and price. The good customer service at Shapeways, as well as all the automated tools to assess printability are also very important to us.
The most passionate testimonials we receive are from people who have recently lost their pet. “Just received my small statue of Shadow and had a little cry. It resembles her so much. Thank you,” was the feedback from a recent customer.
Photo and 3D model of Bertie by Arty Lobster
For as, the biggest modeling challenge is to get an absolutely accurate representation of the pet, bearing in mind the small size (approx. 8 cm tall) and the printing resolution, the right color, right proportions and the look in its eyes. Fur is probably the most challenging individual part of modeling dogs or cats. No full color machine can print high resolution small strands of hair yet, so we have to find an artistic solution instead of modeling each hair.
It is also sometimes a challenge to get the personality of a pet into a sculpture. We can often see that a dog looks calm, intelligent or fierce, and we try to convey this in the sculpture
The shape of very lean dogs like greyhounds can be a challenge, as they have very thin legs and tail that can easily be too delicate for 3D printing.
Bonnie by Arty Lobster
As we do not use a scanning booth, but ask customers to upload their own photos. Sometimes the photos we receive have been taken 5 or 10 years apart, showing a very different looking pet. They can be before/after fur is trimmed and sometimes very low resolution or out of focus. Particularly when a pet has passed away, we might have to work with very different images. I like to think that we manage to get a good results for most, if not all of them.
Like many creative businesses, marketing Arty Lobster is a big challenge. In addition, with 3D printed sculptures, many people want to see and touch the product to understand what we do. We have had a number of great bloggers who have featured us after receiving their own sample pet sculpture, and we grow on word-of-mouth from our existing customers. Lately, we have also started to sell through resellers who heard of us through word-of-mouth, such as online pet shops and vets.
See more examples of Arty Lobster’s pet sculptures in their testimonials section.
This is pretty awesome! I want to get one for my dog Lola!