Sad Teapot is a physical sculpture I made out of clay that turned into both a 3D printable model and a collection of surreal renders inspired by the original piece.
I created this video to showcase my Sad Teapot sculpture as part of a larger portfolio submission for a college application, as I felt that there was no one angle I could photograph it from that did the sculpture justice. The audio dubbed over it was arguably a last minute lapse of judgement, though it definitely drew the attention of the people viewing my portfolio (this was part of my portfolio to get into the Iovine and Young Academy). In any case, you get the idea. Sad, creepy teapot that cries tea out of its eyes instead of out of a spout.
FAST FORWARD A LITTLE BIT...
And bam! I'm in the Iovine and Young Academy (miraculously, considering what they had to judge me by). And I've learned how to 3D model. So I decide to give the Sad Teapot concept another attempt...
As a reminder, my 3D modeling platform of choice is Fusion 360, which is CAD based and not ideal for organic forms like faces. So here's a time-lapse of my construction so you can see what went into making something that lands so squarely in the uncanny valley. Essentially I used the Fillet tool over and over with carefully and symmetrically placed spheres to coax out facial features. This process pushed both me and Fusion 360 to our respective limits.
I printed out my model in a warm grey filament. Unfortunately, this model has to be printed with supports in order to make sure none of the overhangs fail the print, so you can see some residue on the face of the teapot, but other than that I was happy with the results. As pointed out before, it's hard to capture the essence of the model in a photograph from one angle, so there's a few angles of the model below.
Below is a series of renders of the same model using different colors and materials to achieve different tones.
Like what you see? Download the Sad Teapot off of Thingiverse!