Full-colour print or hand-painted? A straight comparison

Once a 3D piece has been printed, there are two ways to give it a coat: print it in full colour throughout, or print it plain and finish it by hand with a brush. They are different objects at the end, and the choice is narrower than most people expect.

Two ways to finish a printed piece

Full-colour print. The colour goes into the print itself. Resin is laid down in layers with pigment in it, so the coat pattern is part of the material rather than something sitting on top of it. There is no paint film to chip, because there is no paint film. A complex pattern — brindle, tortoiseshell, a mottled merle — can be reproduced in one pass, with fine detail placed exactly where the file says.

Hand-painted. The piece is printed as a plain form, then finished at the bench with a brush. Base coats, then layers, then the fine work: the dark line of the eyelid, the shading under the chin, the lighter guard hairs across the back. Paint sits on the surface in thin coats, each worked over the last. It is slower, and it is a different skill from modelling — a painter and a sculptor are not often the same person.

Both are printed forms made from your photographs. The difference is entirely in how the surface becomes the animal.

How they look

At arm’s length, from a shelf or a mantelpiece, they are closer than you would think. Both hold the shape, the pose and the likeness, because those come from the sculpt, and the sculpt is the same in both cases.

Up close is where they part. A full-colour print is even. The colour is consistent across a surface, the edges between markings are crisp, and at a certain distance the coat can read as slightly flat — there is less variation across the surface than there is on a real animal. Under close light you may see the fine grain of the printing process, which most people never notice and a few people mind.

A hand-painted piece is uneven in the way that fur is uneven. Layers of thin paint over one another produce small variations in tone and depth, and the brush marks survive in places. Held in the hand it has more life. Looked at from two feet away, the two finishes are hard to tell apart on a simple coat.

Which looks better depends on what you are looking at. For a solid black cat, or a grey lurcher, the paint does more. For a calico or a tortoiseshell, where the pattern is fine and scattered across the whole body, the print does something a painter cannot do without a very large number of hours.

How they age and how they damage

Both finishes fade in strong light, as pigment does. Neither should be kept in a window that takes direct sun, and neither should sit in a room that runs hot and damp. The care guide covers this properly; the short version is that light and heat are the two things that matter.

Damage is where the two genuinely differ, and it is worth understanding before you choose.

A scuff on a full-colour print cannot be touched up invisibly. The colour is in the material, so a mark that takes the surface off takes the colour with it, leaving a lighter patch with a hard edge. Paint mixed to match will sit on top as a visible patch, because it is a different material catching the light in a different way. The honest advice for a print is to leave a small mark alone, and to keep the piece where it will not be knocked.

A scuff on a painted piece can be repaired. The same brush that put the colour on can put it back. A painter can match the tone, blend the edge, and in most cases you will not find the repair afterwards, particularly on a coat with visible variation in it. A painted piece is also varnished, which is a sacrificial layer: the varnish takes the damage first, and it can be renewed.

That is the strongest practical argument for paint, and it is the reason we would finish anything that is going to be handled by hand wherever the coat allows it.

Cost and time

Hand-finishing adds bench time, and bench time is the expensive part of any piece. A simple two-tone coat takes a few hours at the brush; a complex patterned coat takes far longer, and at that point the labour starts to approach the cost of the print itself.

Full-colour printing is faster and more predictable, and it is one reason printed pieces can start where they do — the Figurine Essential and the 3D Printed Pet Statue both begin at $329. Where the choice is open, painting adds to the price and to the wait. Where the coat demands the print, there is no premium to argue about, because there is no realistic alternative.

Which suits which animal

Roughly, the more complex the coat, the stronger the case for printing.

Solid coats — black, white, cream, chocolate, grey. Paint, without much argument. There is nothing for the print to do that a brush cannot do better.
Two-tone and simple markings — a tuxedo cat, a collie with a white blaze, socks and a chest patch. Either, and the difference is small. Paint ages better.
Fine multi-coloured or random patterns — calico, tortoiseshell, merle, brindle, heavy roan. Print. The randomness across the body is what makes the animal recognisable, and it is the thing a brush cannot reproduce without an unreasonable number of hours.
Pieces that will be handled — anything small, anything a child will pick up. Paint, because it can be repaired.

There is a fourth case that is really the first one again. If the animal is a much-loved cross of no particular type, with a coat that is mostly one colour and one odd patch, paint covers it, and the odd patch is the fun part.

What we would choose

If the coat is simple, we would hand-paint it. It will look better in the hand, it will age better in a room, and if it is ever knocked, it can be put right. That is the choice we would make for our own animals.

If the coat is genuinely complex — the kind where you would struggle to describe the pattern to somebody over the phone — we would print it in full colour, because a painter cannot put a hundred scattered tones in the right places without turning a figurine into a month of work.

The useful thing to know is that the choice is usually made for you by the animal. Most coats fall clearly on one side or the other, and the studio will say which side yours falls on when the photographs arrive, before anything is ordered. If you want a particular finish and the coat makes it a poor idea, we will say so rather than take the order and paint something that will disappoint you.

The two finishes come up across the printed pieces — the Figurine Essential, the Pet Statue and everything else printed in the shop — and the finished work is the fastest way to see what each one looks like in daylight.

If you are still deciding, send two or three photographs and ask. We will tell you which finish we would use for that animal and why, and there is no charge for the conversation.