CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Francis Bitonti on 3D-printed dress for Dita von Teese

www.dezeen.com: "One of the things we’ve been noticing is that materials are becoming media. I’m not operating on materials, I’m operating on animations, I’m operating on video, I’m operating on pixels and polygons. [The design process] is a lot closer to creating a hollywood film than it is making an aluminium cylinder," says Bitonti.

4 comments:

AeonX8 said...

12,000 crystals? And 3,000 unique moving parts? Damn. To me what is most astounding about the continuing developments in 3D printing is not that it is possible to make a physical object look exactly how it has been modeled in a computer (clearly impressive), but that the object is then capable of behaving in the way it was intended to function. At least according to Francis Bitonti in the video. (Note that you do not see Dita moving about in the video, only a few stills.) Conceptually, Dita von Teese is the perfect model for Bitonti’s 3D-printed dress, as she originally gained notoriety in the fetish/bondage scene of 1990s Los Angeles. Despite the moving parts of the dress, it is obviously restricting. But with von Teese modeling, the physical restrictions seem part of the point.

Carolyn Mazuca said...

More and more I am becoming more aware of the epidemic of 3D printing costumes and fabrics! When thinking about clothes you think of soft fabrics, things that have been used and considered for wearable designs for centuries. I am anxious to see how big 3D printing costumes becomes. I feel like in it cannot make up for effects that have been developed over the years but it definitely adds another layer of complexity to what designers can develop when they are considering designs.

Becki Liu said...

Well, this article completely contradicts a comment I previously made! This is also super cool. I would really love to learn 3D modeling again. But I wonder how Dita moves in it. In all of the pictures... well, they're pictures, she's not moving. I wonder if her movement was constricted... like, a lot. Because I keep thinking, any second, one of those 3,000 unique moving parts can just snap... I think it would be really cool to create clothes with 3D modeling but it still has to develop a lot more.

Sabria Trotter said...

I think this is so cool. The versatility of 3-D printers becomes more and more apparent each day. I love the dress and I think its extremely innovative, but I wonder how practical it is. Like Becki said, there is no indication that Dita can move in that dress, which is honestly the case with a lot of wearable art. I wonder if 3-D printing will ever be a viable way to make everyday clothing, but if the current rate that the medium is evolving is any indication, then we are not that far off.