Tom Whitwell at the Times Online has posted a nice article about some different rapid prototyping techniques and organizations that are out there (including Fabjectory).

CandyFab’s sugar printer: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oskay/sets/72157594553416374/

Bathsheba Grossman’s math+metal sculptures: http://www.bathsheba.com/

Fab@Home: http://www.fabathome.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

RepRap: http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome

Something to be noted though is that we don’t actually create World of Warcraft figures. While technically possible, it’s against Blizzard’s TOS to create figures based upon their intellectual property. This is most likely a result of their having signed a licensing agreement with a toy company to sell generic “Human Warrior”, “Dwarf Hunter”, etc. figures

Checkout the image below: it’s of a 3D generated object inspired by a piece of abstract graffiti.

Interesting things:

• There is a copyright symbol in the source image, not sure how this sort of thing works for graffiti
• The 3d image is only loosely based on the original, art inspired by art
• The final object generated is small. This sort of project cries out for something larger scale like the CandyFab 4000

CNet News has a slideshow up showing some of the different celebrity Mii’s that people have created. Fabjectory is mentioned on slide 6 and Dave Curry’s Zach Braff Mii is on slide 5.

Bruce Sterling, the patron saint of all fabjects, has a great interview up on the MIT Technology review site.

With the fabjects we’re creating at Fabjectory, I think we’re still in the opening act as far as narrative goes; mostly they are totems right now: marking a place in time for people and are a way to show of their creativity and individuality.

BBC news has some neat pictures up of an ongoing art exhibit showing real people and their online avatars side by side. It’s about 50/50 whether the people chose to make avatars that looked like themselves or diverged wildly.

I think it just highlights how people are using virtual representations of themselves as a form of self-expression.

Today the Technology Section of the New York Times has a great story about the growing market for 3D Printers (”Beam it Down from the Web, Scotty“), Fabjectory is linked to in the Related section of the article and mentioned as a company doing entrepreneurial work in the consumer 3D Space.

A somewhat altered version of the story by the same author, Saul Hansell, ran in yesterday’s LA Daily News which makes a bigger mention, but no link, to Fabjectory as well.

[Updated] Fixed the last sentence of the first paragraph as I didn’t realize at first (they didn’t have a link directly in the text) that they mentioned us in the body of the article as well.