Clerical Error, Two-Headed Alien Specimen

VISITOR 004 was not supposed to happen.

The file says clerical error

Something went wrong between the model and the print bed. What came off it had two heads, four arms, and was by every measure that matters finished. It was meant to be scrapped. It is still here, and the paperwork has never been completed.

We could tell you it was designed this way. It was not, and pretending otherwise would be the least interesting thing about it.

It is not posed. It is holding on.

Crouched low with the knees up, the arms crossed over the shins and the fingers laced together. Both heads are turned slightly away from each other, which is the detail people go quiet about. Nothing in the pose is aggressive. That is what makes it difficult to put down.

The anatomy is the whole argument

The skulls carry the same fine vein tracery over the crown, the necks share a set of tendons before they separate, and the ribs and the hip joints are modelled as one body underneath. It reads as something that grew this way rather than two figures pushed together, and that is the difference between a curiosity and a joke.

Hand painted, and the wash does the work

A pale grey body with a thinned brown wash pulled into every crease, every vein and the hollows between the ribs, then wiped back off the high points. That is what makes the skin look thin rather than moulded. The eyes are finished in gloss black so they stay wet while everything around them stays matte, which is the one thing that makes a face like this land.

The jar is not included

You get the figure. The jar in the photographs is ours. It is there because that is how a specimen wants to be seen, and because it is the version most people picture.

We are still looking for a jar that is the right size, the right colour, seals properly and does not cost more than the thing inside it. When we find one it will be sold as its own version. Until then, buy the figure and it will sit inside almost any wide-mouth preserving jar you already own.

The numbers

• Hand painted and finished in Australia, and printed here too.
• VISITOR 004. That number belongs to this design and will never be given to another.
• Jar not included.
• Height to be confirmed. It sits low, curled with the knees up, so it takes far less shelf than the standing Visitors.

Looking after it

There are a great many fingers on this object and every one of them is thin. Lift it by the body, never by an arm or a head. Dust with a soft dry brush rather than a cloth, which will catch. Out of direct sun, because PLA softens around 60 degrees.

Ordering one now

Made to order. Order it and yours goes into the next batch, usually within a fortnight, and you are emailed when it goes on the bed and again when it ships. Because it is painted by hand, no two come out quite the same.

Change your mind before it is printed and we refund it in full without asking why. After that you still have every right you have under Australian Consumer Law, which we cannot exclude and would not want to.