We’ve seen 3D printing used to create incredible movie special effects, aerospace parts, medical breakthroughs and humanitarian projects.
Now artist Fernando Sosa is putting 3D printing to work skewering the famous and infamous with his satirical action figures plucked straight from the day’s headline news.
Sosa’s most recent 3D printed commentary, a full color sandstone figurine of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, is replete with a traffic cone hat, an orange traffic control vest and a stop sign which reads ‘STOP! Traffic study.’
If you’re not a follower of elected officials or you’ve been on a retreat in Borneo, Christie has been dealing with a scandal involving political revenge. It seems a traffic study may have been payback and that lane closures were actually retribution against Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich, a Democrat, who had refused to endorse Christie’s reelection bid.
“I was watching him talk about the scandal, and that line he gave, about being out there himself, setting up the cones,” Sosa said. “It stayed with me; I just couldn’t get the picture of it out of my head, him playing with the cones, calling it a ‘traffic study.’ So I made it.”
Sosa, of Orlando, Florida, works as a designer and sells his creations through his shop on Shapeways.
“Back in the day, to make a product, it would cost probably $10,000 for injection molds, sending it off to China, minimum orders of at least $1,000,” Sosa says. “But now you can model something in about a week and print them to order. You don’t need to have an inventory. If a million people wanted one, then they can have one. If you can think it, you can make it.”
“I like politics when it’s funny,” Sosa said. “Colbert, ‘The Daily Show.’ I’m not politically affiliated. Thanks to 21st century technology, now I can make this funny – yet sad – mental picture of this corrupt elected official a hand held desk figurine for your office environment enjoyment.”