Making clay magnet faces

I bought a 3D printer a while ago and started using it to make some fun things.

And then I had my first fail, and I kind of got gun shy. And I didn't really didn't really go back to using it.


But during that time, I had this idea of printing these zombie face magnets, and I thought that they'd be really cool.



Later, after the printer failed, I went back to these magnets and looked at them and thought, “you know, it's cool that they're 3D printed, but they don't they don't have to be. Like, These could easily be sculpted”.


My little zombie friend watches on. He’s very encouraging.




I have all these interesting colors of clay, and I have this cool metal shape that you can cut out ovals and I thought that might make a cool starting size. And then I could just see how much variety I could get from these faces. And I would experiment with some being kind of horizontal and then some being sort of vertical long faces.


And then I can just play with the features and see how much variety I can get there. Give them really simple mouths. But I could play with this other stuff like bags under their eyes or like mustaches or eyebrows. I could give them really crazy noses.

So it started out as sort of this exercise in minimalist design. Like, how much personality can I get out of these guys with the simplest shapes?

Sometimes when I'm in the mood to make things, I get overwhelmed by all the choices and the possibilities. And so to combat that, I like to give myself a really small box to work within.

So this was fun being able to make a variety of characters from very simple colors and very simple shapes.

You can watch the whole studio vlog on my Youtube channel. I’ve got six studio vlogs up already.
https://www.youtube.com/daspetey

I’ve also got some of these little magnet faces for sale up on my Etsy shop, if you’re interested in decorating your fridge. https://www.etsy.com/shop/daspetey