This week it’s Halloween! Time to dress up as something scary! I decided that I wanted to make the mask of Jack Skellington, from “The Nightmare before Christmas“. I used my 3D printer to print a design I found on the internet. In this post I will describe how it went, things I tried, and things I learned.
First of all it’s important to note that most of the print is not my design. You can look at this youtube video of the creator, and download the design here. However, when doing this I wasted a lot of time and material, and got very frustrated. In the end I decided to only make the front of the mask, and I had to edit one piece to make it fit.
The first tip when printing this is to only print the front of the mask. I’m not sure about the whole thing, but I couldn’t make it fit correctly. One issue is that one piece isn’t shaped correctly and should be resized, which then makes another piece not fit. The piece which has to be resized is the piece “Front_Middle_Right.STL”, and it has to be printed at 126%. Then download this piece: for above that piece: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4619958. It still doesn’t fit perfectly, but at least does the job a bit better.
The next tip is to use hot glue to glue the pieces together. I tried glue before, but after dropping the mask I could start all over. Not ideal for halloween. Hot glue is really strong, bonds well, and is forgiving when the pieces don’t exactly fit together (which definitely is the case here).
The last tip is to print the pieces on their side. You will have to deal with a bit of overhang, but you don’t really see it. It’s also way easier than removing the support material, which honestly looks a bit like bone cancer.
To wear the mask I used the hot glue gun to attach elastic bands to the back. I also used hot glue to attach pieces of cloth for the eyes, mouth and nose. This worked surprisingly well, and looks great!
Good luck building your own mask, and happy halloween!