3D Printing the Dark Side of The Force Awakens

By all accounts, "The Force Awakens" opening weekend was an enormous success. Not only did it rake in record ticket sales, but it also has been nearly universally praised by critics and audiences alike. Many fans already report having seen the movie multiple times. It seems like the Force was with J.J. Abrams and his attempt to return Star Wars to its former glory.

A major part of any movie is costuming and props, an area that was as important for "The Force Awakens" as it would be for any period piece. Star Wars characters have a particular look that was laid out a long time ago by George Lucas. The bad guys are monochrome, reflecting their with us or against us mentality, while the good guys tend to favor earth tones giving them a softer appearance. As has been the case for other recent movies, additive manufacturing (AM) played an important role in preparing the look of Star Wars for the big screen.

Kylo Ren has one of the most iconic looks of the new characters introduced in "The Force Awakens." Like Darth Vader before him, the champion of the Dark Side wears a mask that conceals his face (and identity). Already covered head to toe in black, the mask completes the job of completely hiding any human features, making Ren into a faceless villain.

In order to shoot the movie, Abrams required multiple versions of the mask to be created. When Star Wars first came to theaters, the costume department would have spent months designing and building a series of masks to be used. Now though, the same task can be accomplished in days thanks to AM.

A number of costumes from the new movie were put on display during the Star Wars Celebration in London earlier this year, including Kylo Ren’s. From information gathered at the event, it transpires that Ren’s mask is the result of 3D printing. Using AM to build the mask offered costumers the chance to use CAD files to tweak it for each use, rather than redesigning the mask from scratch.

Kylo Ren wasn’t the only character to benefit from AM. Various pieces of kit used by Stormtroopers were built using 3D printing, as was the newest version of C3PO’s metallic shell. Anthony Daniels, the man inside the golden droid, talked about the new costume.

“For 'The Force Awakens,' when J.J. Abrams asked me if I would be in it, he said, “Do you just want to do the voice?” And I said, “I want to be in the costume, but I want it to be faster,” Daniels told Yahoo. “So what they did was 3D print it. It weighs about the same, I would say, because the plastic is quite heavy, but it allows you to prototype things. So it looks exactly the same, but there are differences to the way it fits together that make it much faster to put on and take off, which is most important. It gets hot in there.”

If you haven’t seen it yet, below you’ll find a trailer for "The Force Awakens."

Sources: Star Wars Celebration, Yahoo