MakieLab, based in London's Shoreditch, have been one of the more interesting applications of the trends of 3D printing and mas customization in the consumer space. As they moved out of beta, the Makies – highly customizable, 3D-printed dolls, which are positioned as the physical extrusion of a series of video games – have attracted attention, funding, and a powerhouse chairwoma nin the form of the absurdly well-connected Martha Lane Fox (best known as the founder of Lastminute.com, and recently created Baroness of Soho).
Today saw a significant step towards the mass market with the launch of the Makies Doll Maker iPad app, available from the iTunes App Store, Tuesday.
The app provides a touch-based process for building a "Makie" – with a range of outfits, and slider bars to change size, shape and color of eyes, brow length and height, jaw width and so on. Once finalized, the doll can be ordered as an in-app or credit card purchase. Since Makies are still not cheap, parental authorization is required, but a touch app empowers children to "build their own" in a way the a web site's slider bars may not.
An endless number of digital avatars can be created, and only the most pleasing ordered, at which point it is printed in bioplastic, assembled, accessorized with hair and eyes and send to the buyer.
Parental guidance
The addition of parental controls is an interesting sign of a move in the targeting of the Makie product. Although CEO Alice Taylor had always wanted to produce dolls for a mass market of children, the initial sales were largely made to doll enthusiasts and technologists, as Makielab experimented with price points and procedures (creating ethnically diverse dolls was a challenge – adding colour to a 3D printer's "ink cartridge" means that it will never print pure white again, so the first runs of Makies were porcelain white).
My own private imago - Daniel the Makie
Unusually for a 3D-printed product, the Makies have received CE certification – that is, they have been confirmed as safe (in terms of choking hazards, the risk of shattering, sharp points etc) for sale in the European Economic Area and EU.
3D printing at this level is often something of Wild West – possibly literally, in the much-publicized recent case of WikiWeapon's plans to release 3D printable designs for firearms receivers. I asked Taylor by email about the relevance of the certification.
It has lots of implications, mainly in retail and stockists: online stores are less picky, but traditional retail is very picky. But generally it's not about the pickiness of the retailer and about principles: having a basic standard of quality if you're going to target kids.
[On] the process: to be honest, the biggest part of the process was choosing the powdered nylon in the first place: it's nylon, and a bio plastic (safe for human, often dental, use), so we knew we wouldn't have issues with toy safety, unlike with many of the other materials available for 3D printing: many of the resins, and the soaked-in-superglue coloured powder you see off zCorp machines (Figureprints, My Robot Nation, Mineways, etc) wouldn't pass toy safety.
It seems as if a highly customizable product like a Makie would be hard to certify, however, due to the possible variations in design:
We covered this by sending all the extremes: the ugliest Makies you can make! The pointiest ears, the sharpest pointy-hands, etc. A sample of wigs, a sample of accessories. Because all the extremes have passed, anything less extreme isn't going to pose a pointiness problem, for instance.
With the pointiness problem put to bed, Makies are another step closer to the mass market. Cost remains an issue – a basic Makie costs £59.99 (around $95), with cloths and accessories (sunglasses, wings, hook hands) adding to that cost. However, costs tend to come down in 3D printing not due to scale, but by greater efficiencies being uncovered in production and distribution. Also, parents spend ridiculous amounts on their children. In a world where there is an actual industry for bronze casts of infants' feet, there is an opportunity for a doll resembling the child, and able to interact with curated mobile and online games. Anyone wondering what a personalized self-insert into SkyLanders, or Disney Infinity, might look like or sell for may not be wholly on the wrong track.
Disclosures: what I really want 3D-printed right now is a shim for my blackout blinds in the TV room.
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