Project 3 - Concept

For this project I would really like to try and make a simple custom ball jointed doll using resin 3D printing. I want to try to make something similar to Bucket, as he has a humanoid design, but is still fairy simple, composed mostly of geometric shapes.

I would really like to try printing in resin as is appears to be the standard for BJDs and miniature figures due to it's higher quality when printing small detailed, sculptural shapes. I plan on using a local 3D printing service.

I am also interested in trying to learn how to use Blender for this project, as it has more capability for organic sculpting, which would be really useful if I want to ever try making sculptures to 3D print in the future.

One aspect of making a BJD that I think will be challenging will be making all of the joint functional. There is a lot of process reference for Bucket which shows how the joint are made, and I found this website explaining how to make BJD joints.

The more I think about what concept I want to make for my BJD, the more Bucket just seems like the perfect design, which is annoying because I don't want to just copy his design. Bucket  has several features that make him a really good first BJD design, and are hard to achieve with a different design:

  • He is a robot - made of geometric rather than organic shapes, and I have less experience with organic sculpting
  • His design is based on spheres, the same shape of basic BJD joints, making his joints a seamless aspect of his design
  • He is humanoid - so his joints can be designed and he can be strung like a human BJD (which there is a lot of information about on the internet)


Once I started looking for inspiration and coming up with ideas, I found a lot of different concepts that seemed like they would work well.


The idea that like the best for this project is making a little astronaut character. It has similar simplicity and geometric shapes to a robot while being a good starting point for coming up with my own original design.

My astronaut design is inspired by the style of the videogame Astroneer.


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