3D Printed Revision: Flexi Animals 2025

One of the things that we have been able to use as a active resource is projects from this blog.  We also have a pedagogy when we want to use the students, via flipped learning to inspire and create projects for others, that is students from other schools.

Perhaps our most popular design, and series of designs that featured on this blog in the last few years was a series of flexi-animals that were original and unique and created by a former student.  These designs were created originally as either close copies or free sourced animals,  As the print investigations and printing developed we went from copying existing designs to taking the available designs and breaking them down via a deconstruction process.   This allowed students to master the process and apply the process to a range of designs and animals.   The student responsible has left the school however prior to doing so they created a google slide that detailed the entire process from start to finish.

This year as we have used our inspiration box of a range of prints that we use to say to students 'could you make this?' 'can this be made?' One of our capable students located the kiwi shown in the picture above and we explained about the process.

Having made the slideshow available to the new student (who is a Y4 student, someone turning nine) the student was able to use the instructions, the designs and the creation to complete the process and produce their own version of the product.    

The 2025 student created version (shown left) has a number of issues that the student should be capable of resolving moving forward.    She needs to pay attention to the linking specifically - while the linking is correct as it stands it needs to be more robust to allow the design to be played with and manipulated.  The student will be more than capable of this which will then unlock the process of producing a range of these designs with this basic.   Shown below is the original student created slideshow.