Putting Head Joint together

Using compound, the pieces of the head joint (ball, pole and head) are united to form the full head piece.

Hollow Head

The head needed to be hollowed out to allow for ball and socket joint and to minimise cost of printing. Done with a series of spheres.

Rotating Head

Decided to use a ball and socket joint to enable the head to rotate on two axes.
Firstly copied the head and then cut off the old one. Secondly, cut into the body segment with a sphere to create one part of the joint. Create another sphere inside for the other part of the joint, the second sphere is .4mm smaller.

Building in Max

Building formwork base in Max

Concept

Developing a concept to recreate an owl figure. From the bottom up the texture is created by 'formwork' shapes to give the feeling that the object is a building under construction. From the top down the object has an organic texture, feathered to represent a 'natural' object. Points of intersection show an 'impossible' meshing of materials, with feathers growing of steel. It is unclear whether the 'constructed' is taking over the 'natural' or the 'natural' consuming the 'constructed'.
A ball and socket joint allows the head of the owl to turn 360%, as in real life.

Mesh of owl, with noise cleaned up and surface reconstructed

MeshLab

Point cloud of owl photosynth imported into Meshlab

Dancer Photosynth

Tried another photosynth with the same location, light conditions and number of images as the owl photosynth. Only 44% synthy - photosynth won't move around the back of the object. Maybe because the feature points at the back are quite different from those at the front? Maybe more images in the transition zone will help...
http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=feac33b9-b012-4c10-b857-3cd56405ea69

Owl Photosynth

Snapshot of Owl Photosynth. 94% synthy. Jumps around a bit, especially when moving of views of the top of the object.
http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=b27875f5-79c1-4c8e-a565-2ee41488e2ed