Mandai Wildlife Figurines

A pair of display figurines we made for Mandai’s zoo school: a pangolin and a bulbul, two animals native to Singapore, each modelled and finished to look like the real thing. They are teaching pieces, made so students can study up close the creatures they would rarely see in the wild, each mounted on a turned timber base ready for a classroom or a display case.

A pangolin and a bulbul

The two subjects are among Singapore’s own wildlife, and both are threatened, which is exactly why a zoo school wants them on the table. The pangolin walks low over its base, every overlapping scale sculpted and shaded so the armour catches the light the way a real one does. The bulbul perches on a fine branch off a tree stump, head tilted, its feathers layered and its bright crown picked out by hand. Seen together they make a small scene of the forest these animals share.

Six crafts in one piece

A figurine like this is not a single print. It is a stack of processes, each chosen for the part it suits best. The main bodies were FDM 3D printed, the finest details resin printed, and the larger forms reinforced with fibreglass so they stay light but strong. Steel rod was bent and set inside to armature the slender branch, the bird’s legs and the structure, so nothing sags or snaps. The display bases were turned from timber in the workshop. Bringing 3D printing, fibreglass, metalwork and carpentry together in one small object is the whole craft of it.

Painted to look alive

All of that construction disappears under the paint. Both figures were hand-painted, working colour and shadow into the scales and feathers until the printed surface reads as living skin and plumage: the warm sheen of the pangolin’s scales, the soft grey and gold of the bulbul. It is the finishing that turns a set of parts into an animal a child will believe.