Dennis Chan

5-25-16

2016-05-25T23:27:00.001-07:00

Finished a new model recently, combining two kits and a few other parts. Feeling more comfortable now with how the airbrush works together with hand painting.

The idea was that the funnels are damaged and now have to stay connected to the main body, hence the articulated arms. In practice though the two main arms coming off of the backpack are very stiff, and it's a bit nerve-wracking to try and pose them around. Think it turned out okay though.

12-2-15

2015-12-02T11:17:00.001-08:00

I have recently updated my website into three sections: Sculpture, Sketches, and Commercial work.
The first section includes "finished" works, but only has two entries so far though that is growing. Materials include resin casting of wax sculpture, wood, styrene, and others: SCULPTURE

Second are quick studies of gesture, markmaking, and anatomy. Done in polymer clay: SKETCHES

Third includes digital sculpts done for toy companies. Made in Pixologic Zbrush: COMMERCIAL

Also, which is possibly harder to find which is kind of the point, my student work is on the site too here: OLD WORK

6-24-15

2015-06-24T23:51:00.001-07:00

I have finished assembling a "new" model kit-- the 1/100 MG Sazabi from 2000. I am aware that the new Sazabi, designed by Hajime Katoki, ranks on many people's lists as the best Master Grade kit to date, but this one has a lot of sentimental value for me.

When I was young, my mom took us on a trip to visit family in Hong Kong. It was one of the happiest trips I can remember-- probably because my mom, having grown up there, didn't feel as if she had to cram as many activities as possible into the one trip. So a lot of the time I was more or less left to my own devices, and nothing attracted a nine-year-old's attention like robot model kits. And for me, an American kid who had never been to Asia, I was in robot model kit paradise.

On this particular trip, I was particularly spoiled. I guess I must have looked really, irresistibly happy, because I got a generous amount of robot-related presents that year (it was a Christmas trip). I knew nothing about Gundam-- I had no idea what the story was about, I didn't know who this "Zeon" was, and I thought the RX-78-2 looked a little plain. What I did know, however, was which box art illustrations I liked... and which ones I really liked. I really liked the ones with the single dot eye. I still have the Gouf Custom and my favorite, the Kampfer, that I built during that trip.

The one kit I never got though was the MSN-04 Sazabi. There were two reasons it eluded me: first, my relatives' indulgence did have a limit; second, the box is freaking enormous. I can still remember it mythically perched on the highest shelf in some model boutique, just out of reach. It remained that way, untouchable on an imaginary pedestal, after we got back home and for many years after.

Over a decade later, as a senior in undergrad, I received from my significant other what is probably pound-for-emotional-pound the greatest birthday present I've ever received. My roommate even helped her hide it from me until it was given. You will see in this next photo a box, with a spoon and pencil juxtaposed for scale purposes. What I see is a nine-year-old's fantastic idea of the best toy that could possibly be made, now taking physical form in the guise of a slightly beat up box that has traveled from Japan to Rhode Island to California, where it waited even more long months before finally being properly appreciated.

From past experience though I knew if I started right in on my prize then chances were high that I'd botch something. That's why all the models I've shown and haven't shown on this blog have been smaller, cheaper kits--warm-ups for the main event. Here he is now. I hope nine-year-old Dennis approves.

5-24-15

2015-05-24T22:38:00.001-07:00

Website is up finally! I know I said early next year last year... at least it's the same year.

Now Presenting: www.chandennis.com!

1-4-15

2015-01-04T17:39:00.001-08:00

This is a miniature sketch for what is to be my next project. Actually, I realized after posting the photo that this is in fact a photo of some foil that happens to have my out-of-focus sketch in front of it.

The base, 3/8" piping screwed into a wood base. Armature wire used to provide a frame.

The wire frame supports the layers of glue solution + paper towels. When dry, it becomes very strong. There are probably easier ways to accomplish the same task, but this method of working is important to me.

Clay goes right over the paper layer, with smaller forms made with lumps of aluminum foil inside.

These two views show a more refined base with the figure that will accompany it. The angle of the figure is not quite final, since he has to be more upright at this stage since he's not actually adhered to the base in any way (currently just pegs into a groove).

Finally, three views of the base by itself. Still adjusting, but this is basically what it will look like.

12-9-14

2014-12-09T09:04:00.003-08:00

Website coming soon! Planning for early 2015. In the meantime I have a few updates to round out the year.

I took part in a Secret Santa exchange, on the Fwoosh message boards. That means a bunch of action figure hobbyists are making unique pieces for each other-- I used to be active on the forums in high school but this is the first time I've participated in the event. Here's what I came up with. I am just going to put up the finished photos now, leaving the WIP and explanations for a later post.

After sculpting and casting the pieces, this becomes essentially a resin kit, or garage kit, with production joints inserted. A bit more functional than the previous time I did something like this.

Stay tuned for the WIP, as well as updates on other projects.

8-13-14

2014-08-13T12:35:00.000-07:00

Some status updates on current projects.

Still a ways to go.

Also saw some familiar looking products at Toys R Us yesterday.

Here's a clearer picture of what these are:

I worked on some of these pieces about a year ago. Here's the original 3D model for the drum set:

6-25-14

2014-06-25T19:18:00.001-07:00

A few photo updates on current work. Will definitely have to make smarter mold/seam line decisions in the future.

Another model, not quite done yet, I still have to do the hand painting. These have been useful as "practice" subjects (meaning, I keep screwing things up. Hopefully that happens less and less).

6-14-14

2014-06-14T09:47:00.001-07:00

Messing around with a new photo setup.

6-8-14

2014-06-08T23:47:00.000-07:00

Small update on my statue. I think I'll end up doing the same procedure I did with the animal sculpts-- finishing the figures themselves first and tackling the bases later.

Parts are fitting well enough. And didn't get to finish the head but getting close.

6-2-14

2014-06-02T19:57:00.000-07:00

I finally made more progress on the farthest along project I have.

The rest of his body is cast and ready to go, just have to assemble and fix seam lines, etc. Hopefully should be close to done by the next update.

And the next one. Trying a bit to go back to basics here. This figure is a companion piece to another that has only gotten to the armature stage.

And the next Gunpla kit. Still treating this one as a warm up/practice kit before diving into more complex models.

5-28-14

2014-05-28T19:28:00.002-07:00

Well I finished something, even if it's just a model kit.

This is one of the main suits in Zeta Gundam (1987). The biggest difficulty the kit has is the chrome finish. More specifically, the nub marks that are visible when the parts are removed from the gates.

I had two solutions to this: first, to put surface details over the seams. This can be seen on the back panels, the shoulders, and the feet. Not the most elegant solution, but I think it's still more sightly than the scratched gate marks. These were the most visible seams.

Second, to just accept that to fix every single gate mark would probably require a ton of precision painting(black then silver then clear yellow, only along the edges) and still would only look good, not great, in the end, and that they are therefore acceptable losses since the kit is actually pretty well designed to hide the problem areas.

Also this was the first time I used dry transfer (rub) decals. I am very impressed with them. I could see that these two only worked as well as they did since I was applying them to a large, smooth, flat area, but even so they look great. This was surprising to me since I'd always heard that water slide decals were preferable, and supplemental water slide decals seem by and large to be made and used much more frequently than anything else. So I did some tests.

These were my first three attempts with water slides. They look pretty not awesome, with the border and the surface of the decal very visible. I think though a lot of this was because the surface I applied them to was not so smooth.

I then tried sanding it very finely to a glossy finish before applying the decals. Figure III (the decal is tiny, I know) was done with a coat of gloss, decal, another coat of gloss, and the matte topcoat. IV was just a dry transfer test. V was just a lot of sanding, decal, topcoat. These last two worked much better. Not sure if this means I have to sand down whatever surface I'm working on before ever using decals though.

5-6-14

2014-05-06T22:31:00.000-07:00

Finished mold/casting the arms at least.

This example shows when things get frustrating, instances like this where a tiny 1 mm bubble means I have to run the casting process again. Not always is that necessary, but most of the time unfortunately it is.

These parts are cut where they are so that when I assemble the whole thing it will be easier to clean up the inevitable seam lines. On a smooth, continuous surface like a human form, there are usually no great places to break into separate parts. That's why costume elements, like shirt sleeves or random arm bands are sometimes deliberately designed so that there is a nice clean place to make a cut.

Last weekend I went to Chicago. Among other activities, I visited the Field Museum, which has a particularly strong focus on some of my own personal interests.

(These last two aren't dinosaurs but marine reptiles)

Finally, here are some photos of figures taken when I came back home.

4-28-14

2014-04-28T23:04:00.001-07:00

Not quite drawing from observation. Still useful though.

4-21-14

2014-04-21T10:21:00.000-07:00

Here's a new clay sketch. I changed my mind about this guy's direction while working on it so I'm not quite sure where he'll end up going.

And more progress on this other one. Getting close now. I'm happy with how the hands are turning out.

And here's the idea for his head.

So I took that straight-on photo just to see how this would look:

Finally here is a finished plastic model. I'm trying to use them as quick, regular ways to make sure I don't forget how to paint and photograph things, since my sculpts take so long between each project. The one on the left is an action figure, the one on the right is the assembled and painted model kit.

4-14-14

2014-04-14T10:04:00.000-07:00

Finally the studio is at what I consider full capacity, meaning basically the last piece of equipment I needed arrived. Here's a quick tour.

We start with the clay station. The pasta roller is on another desk.

This is where I do most of the messy physical work: cutting, drilling, sanding, soldering, etc. And yes assembling plastic models.

The wax station.

And the most recent, the molding/casting station. The vacuum pump/chamber (orange) and the compressor/pressure pot (red thing on floor/bucket with yellow tube) are the recent additions. So do I really need all these things to make castings? To answer that I did some tests.

These are the face piece from my earlier Zanneck projects. So the mold was made without degassing the rubber since I did not have a vacuum chamber at the time, and these three test shots show the results on the resin casts using: a) no pressure b) slight pressure from my little airbrush compressor and c) decent pressure from the big and super loud compressor.

So even with a less than ideal mold, using more pressure yielded better results. To get thoroughly solid results though here is a casting I did using the vacuum chamber first to prep the rubber for the mold and then the pressure pot to degas the resin:

For more information on the pressurizing of molds/casts, I found this blog post: {here} to be pretty clear in terms of showing its true utility.
Also yes, this post is a day late. I account for the delay because I went out to compete at a wrestling tournament on Saturday, my first matches in about two years.

4-6-14

2014-04-06T18:56:00.001-07:00

Here's more progress. I'm pleased with how the right hand is coming along. The left hand will be resting on part of the leg so I will first mold and cast that and then sculpt the hand and fingers over the resin.
In case anyone is wondering what that is in the backgrounds, it's this:

There is a series of statues called the CCP Muscular Collection, featuring the Kinnikuman characters. From what I can gather, a few of the sculpts were also made in unpainted, unfinished versions-- I'm guessing this is some sort of homage to the Kinnikuman origins as the little rubber figures (Kinkeshi in Japan, M.U.S.C.L.E. in the US).

The actual reason for this aside, as a sculptor I wish all companies would release versions of their products like this. It's easier to see the sculpt on its own. And it was much cheaper than the finished version. In fact it didn't even come in a box, just a plastic bag with this label:

While on the subject of random toy-related things, I'll end this post with a few photos of the rock Impact Effect that Bandai just released.

Always remember, "they are never leave you."

3-30-14

2014-03-30T23:20:00.000-07:00

This week I took a lot of sequential work in progress photos. It's probably better to look through them unbroken, without my written interruptions. Here's the creation of a couple shins.

3-16-14

2014-03-16T22:56:00.000-07:00

Didn't get a whole lot of time to work this week.

3-9-14

2014-03-10T00:43:00.002-07:00

Was not able to get a whole lot done this week, so I thought it would be a good time to share some work from some friends and colleagues.

My mentor at Hasbro, Dave Proctor, formed an independent company Boss Fight Studio along with a few other toy designers, including fellow sculptor Fred Aczon. Regarding industrial sculpture, Dave and Fred (along with the other managers) taught me basically everything I know-- I'll always be an admirer of their work.

This is a prototype for a new original action figure series they will be producing soon, shown at the New Jersey Collector's Con 2014 this past weekend. I don't know a lot about it besides this: it looks great at this point and it's made by people who truly love what they do.

These three images are examples of Dave's work in wax. Yes, that Iron Man was hand-sculpted in wax, about 4 inches (10 cm) tall.

And here are some examples of Fred's work. The Destro (middle image) was worked on by various sculptors besides Fred but is still impressive nonetheless. Fred, like Dave, is a master of his craft.

Bios for Dave, Fred, and the rest of their crew can be found here: http://bossfightstudio.com/

Now one thing to note is that all the Boss Fight stuff is being done digitally, while the stuff shown here is wax. Their background though, which takes years to master, I find to be unmistakably evident in any medium, including Zbrush.
They will be launching a Kickstarter soon, so you will probably hear more from me regarding that campaign in the future. I may do some work for them in the future as well, which would be great, but time will tell.

While on the subject of things I have nothing to do with, I recently got a couple figures which have quickly placed themselves near the top of the list of my favorite toys.

These are two of the first figures in the Revoltech Takeya Buddhist Statue Collection, from famed sculptor Takayuki Takeya. His work, along with that of Yasushi Nirasawa, has influenced many of the original American pop culture sculptors and garage kit innovators back in the 90's. I love this concept and I'm kicking myself for not having ordered them sooner (these first came out around 2012).

Now all toy fans/industry folk are aware of the necessity of reusing parts-- molds are expensive. These do such a smart job with it though that I hardly notice. Looking at these two, the arms, legs, and wheel on the back of course are shared between them, but because of the uniqueness of the torso and heads, as well as the brilliant paint schemes, they don't feel like a bunch of reused pieces, as is too often the case.

There are actually four of these, but as I got them to study from I figured that right now all I needed was two to compare and maybe down the line I will get the others. I have a few of their newer brethren on order, and I am hoping to see more from them in the future.

3-2-14

2014-03-02T16:48:00.001-08:00

Work in progress photos for new project.

My heads tend to become very goon/meathead looking. Will try to avoid that going forward.

2-23-14

2014-02-24T00:19:00.000-08:00

Here is some professional work I can show. Toy Fair 2014, a large industry show in New York, was last weekend. Hasbro displayed a lot of upcoming and current product that I had a hand in.

This is Ezra, who I understand to be a main character in the upcoming animated series Star Wars Rebels. I did a couple versions of him, this is the 12 inch "Hero Series" version. The changes to the body were likely done at the facility in China--that's why the clothing folds are changed. Also I'm pretty sure that texture on the coat is done to the steel mold itself.

So this is Marvel Super Hero Mashers Wolverine. The concept of the line is to have the head and limbs and parts be interchangeable between all the figures, so you could have Captain America wearing Iron Man's armor with Wolverine's claws or something like that. I only did the head though.

These two are part of the "Mission Series." Now all I actually did was make adjustments to these, the main sculpts I'm pretty sure were done by Gentle Giant. These are the kinds of frequent tweaks we made in house-- changing the pose, changing costume details, adding the damaged texture to Grievous and the woolly texture to Obi Wan, etc.

The Zbrush sculpt pictured here is the Stormtrooper I did. I was given two versions, a 12 inch Hero Series and the classic 3 3/4" inch size figure. The great thing about digital sculpts is something like this, where I made a Stormtrooper and can adjust it in two different ways and resize it for the purposes of two different figures. I think he's also from the Rebels line.

As of late this is a lot of what I've been doing: Angry Birds. Here's Mace Windu, in all his glory. I'm not actually sure what the Telepods function is, I assume it has to do with a QR code and something scanning something else.

Finally this is the head I did for the Marvel Legends Spider-Man Infinite Series (rolls right off the tongue...) Toxin. Or as the box bills him, Spawn of Symbiotes, since he shares a spot with Carnage. The hands and other parts are reused from existing parts so I only did the new head, but it's an interesting full circle kind of feeling. As a teenager I used to make tons of custom figures for this exact toy line that I've now worked on as a professional. There's just something uniquely direct about making something with my own hands.

2-16-14

2014-02-17T00:57:00.000-08:00

So the next step here would normally be to paint it. Since it is basically a garage kit though there are a couple steps that need to happen first: parts have to be cleaned up and connections have to be fitted.

Here's what a typical casting might look like. This is the chest piece except the resin did not fill all the way so I had to adjust the mold a couple times before it allowed the urethane to flow through. The line where the mold parted needs to disappear and the little air bubbles need to be dealt with as well.

The underside also needs a lot of work. Since this will never be seen (besides right here) it doesn't have to be pretty but it does need to fit flush with the parts of the frame it attaches to.

After that it was time to start painting. First, gray primer:

Followed by a rough idea of what the final color will be.

I wish I hadn't done the base layer for the frame in black, it was too extreme. As for the colors I considered a fully saturated palette due to the bright pink parts of the design. But I decided against that look (too Tron-like) but still opted to have some saturation so it wouldn't look incongruous with other painted models.

There was a lot of masking that had to be done.

So this is probably a rookie oversight but I found I had to do leave some physical changes to this stage, after having started painting already. The lower legs had to be sealed and finished after painting everything under them, and other details like the light "bulbs" and the hose that houses the wires for the wings had to wait until I finished the surrounding areas.

Paint coming off with the masking tape was also an issue. Probably would not have happened if I hadn't been rushing so much, but still it seemed not entirely predictable.

After that, it was done. Or as done as I had time enough for. Now for the contest we were only allowed a limited number and had to show the front, side, and back views. Here were the shots I used.

My favorites were the ones taken with the LEDs on and a few tea lights in front as the only external illumination. Unfortunately they didn't all come out clearly but I loved the effect.

So all in all it was a very educational project. The process was a lot of guesswork and hoping that things would turn out in the end. Many things didn't go as planned but I'll only talk about a few incidents here. The first major setback was the cheekbone breaking.

That's the piece I call the cheekbone at least. I was setting the bulbs into the head, which are a tight fit since the connection needs to basically be flush so that light does not bleed out of the edges. I tried to use too much force and the head flew out of my hands as a result. I was able to find it okay but the right cheekbone was missing. This was a styrene piece that was glued to a resin cast, so I did not have a mold of it and couldn't just make another one. To make a long, panicked story short, I looked around every square inch of the studio and luckily found it.

The second and worse experience was the shoulder breaking off-- not my resin part but the frame itself.

This happened during the final assembly stages when the chest armor was glued on and the wiring and the lights were inside and everything. So I almost gave up there but decided that with the giant shoulder pads he wouldn't move his arms too much, and anyway I probably wouldn't be fiddling around with posing it a whole lot. So I permanently fixed the shoulder in place, and then the other to balance it out, so he can no longer do shoulder raises (in gym terms). The arms still have full movement from the bicep down though.

The final blow would have been the LEDs: after each step of assembly or painting I would test the lights to see if my roughness had caused any malfunction. Each time to my surprise they still lit up perfectly. At the very end when all the painting had been done I tried the lights one last time, and nothing happened. This is where the switch is housed, by the way.

So I was pretty defeated at this point. The whole exercise basically was to have that dramatic effect of the suit lighting up a dark place. I tried checking all the connections, not that I could really re-weld them at that point. I switched out the battery, twice. Finally I just flipped the switch on and off a bunch of times until once I saw the lights flicker. I was convinced that from the last time I successfully tested the lights to this point I hadn't done anything that should have damaged them, and it must just be a contact issue. So after a lot of fiddling I got it to light sometimes. Finally I just tried to clean it, using the airbrush compressor to blow though the housing of the battery and the wires and everything.

It worked. These pictures are blurry because I was so relieved that I needed some immediate proof for myself that, at least for some time, my project had not failed completely. So I almost forgot to mention the contest. This was for a contest at HobbyLink Japan, where I get a lot of supplies and toy-related items. I didn't win and I probably didn't come close. This is the project that won:

They were looking for the cleanest, prettiest, most smartly detailed piece. Mine was not that at all, but that was never the point. The point in my mind was this: in trying to make my favorite mech design I would force myself to learn to solder, practice airbrushing, solve some mechanical problems, and take better photos. I think I achieved those in various degrees of success.

This is the B-Club (Bandai's garage kit line) Zanneck. Judging by how hard it was for me to find any info about them, there were probably very few made and I'm assuming of the ones bought a lot have remained unassembled. So I doubt I'd ever find one for sale. Well, mine lights up, and I think it looks better anyway. Of course, there's no way I'm biased.

2-9-14

2014-02-10T00:12:00.000-08:00

Finally I'm allowed to show the project that occupied me for much of last December, though I started it even earlier than that.

This is the design that I wanted to make. It's a suit from Victory Gundam (1993), which is not a popular series. But it's my favorite series, and my favorite design from that series. Since the show was not very successful, Bandai did not make a whole ton of Victory kits-- sixteen 1/144 scale models were made, though one is just a bunch of weapons and a few of the others are just variations with a few new parts. So the Zanneck, this suit, never got a Bandai release, though Bandai through their resin kit branch B-Club did release one:

But those were twenty years ago now and I wanted to make one up to today's "standards", however loose that may be. So I started with a modern kit, the Real Grade Zaku. The inner frame was what I wanted from it, plus some of the outer armor is not unlike the Zanneck. Add to that the fact that (in-universe) the Zaku is about the same size as the Zanneck and it seemed like a good fit. The first thing I did was model a clay sketch just to flesh out some of the proportions.

That was the easy part. The fun part, I guess you could say, since I actually know what I'm doing. Having done this I went ahead with making the new parts. This was kind of a trial and error process because the new parts needed to fit flush onto the existing parts and frame. I first tried this styrene lattice thing:

So the good thing about this was that I was able to keep it reasonably symmetrical. The bad thing was that once I waxed over the styrene it would be a serious pain if I needed to change it and go back into areas with plastic embedded in them. I ended up gluing a few pieces of styrene as a framework, waxing over it, then stripping the styrene off after building up some thickness in the wax.
The other method was using all plastic parts, slowly measuring and cutting. Unsurprisingly this worked best for the very geometric parts, like the shoulders and back of the feet.

I wanted the end product to be able to recreate the character's active and passive modes with the folding wings. And I wanted it to light up through the wings. So it had to do this:

With wiring running through it. So first I made the sliding track using square styrene. I basically made a 2 x 3 grid but only glued the top row and the middle rod on the bottom.

Then the track assembly need to swing around atop the shoulder with the wiring intact. So the post it is mounted on, the axis of rotation, is a hollow tube with room for the wires.

Things went pretty smoothly up to this point, which was an unexpected relief. Next was molding and casting all the parts which needed a lot of cleanup but was more or less straightforward.

Now this is where the learning curve and accompanying frustration set in. The other construction challenge was the LEDs. I wound up using nine surface-mounted LEDs in each wing, eight in the chest, and one in the head for twenty-seven total. So I was forced to relearn my electricity diagrams from high school and parallel circuits. To keep things simple I'll just say that a lot of wiring had to be done and I'm sure my soldering is not the neatest.

Great drawing, huh?

Next was the actual placement of the battery and switch. The CR 2032 battery holder is kind of large (compared to a 12 cm figure) and the only place where it made any sense was on the back. At first I was going to have the battery face up, into the backpack, but I realized I wouldn't be able to change it when it died. So placing it battery-side down had the issue of the contact on the other side jutting out into the backpack. I shaved off the plastic prong and laid the metal contact flat so the whole thing would lie flat against the backpack while exposing the battery on the underside for replacement.

And it works! Miraculously. So this is where I'll end today. Next week: finishing, painting, running out of time, and photography.

2-2-14

2014-02-03T00:02:00.002-08:00

So I was not able to make much progress on my main project, the figure from last week. There will be more on that next time but for this post I finished a kind of test project.

The intention of this project was first, a gift, and second, a chance to try out Shapeways, a NY-based company that makes 3D prints of anyone's submitted digital models in a number of materials.

The models are almost exactly the same diameter as an American quarter though a little thinner. They measure about 2.5 cm across (a little taller at the top for the ring) and just under .25cm in depth, with a volume of about .53 cubic cm each.

These were originally intended as jewelry, but it's very hard to get a feel for how something physically exists when it's just a digital model. In this case, when I got the physical pieces in the mail they did not have the weight I was expecting. The surface also has some irregularities which disqualified their usage in my eyes as suitable for jewelry.

So I had to change their direction to these keychain-charm things, probably more functional anyway. The other discrepancy I found was the scale of the surface details. On my screen I wasn't sure if the text or the symbols would be legible but as these photos show they are very clear. That probably says more about my inexperience than it does about the process though. Another note regarding the photos is that they are very misleading. Since I was the photographer in this case I know that the actual pieces look and feel cheaper and lighter than they appear here, which I'm sure is also the case with many of the metal pieces on their site.

Overall I am pretty glad with how they turned out. I have to say that the Shapeways site is incredibly easy to use: you send in your file and almost immediately it tells you if the geometry is okay and where it needs fixing if holes are found. I mentioned they do a number of materials, from different kinds of plastic, to metals, and ceramics and sandstone. Now each of these materials has its own price and restrictions, but your model is automatically checked for the minimum wall thickness for each material, a very convenient feature.

I would use them again-- the prices are pretty reasonable and the interface couldn't be simpler. I would need to do a few more experiments before I felt comfortable with properly predicting how the prints turn out though.