With Endgame just a few short weeks away the maker community is once again recreating the characters from the MCU with this rendition of Thanos maybe the best out there, on top of being incredibly large.

Lewis Harris is the man behind this project, and he spoke to us about how he completed this impressive figure.

This version of Thanos started off of as a model being sold on Gambody. Unlike places like Thingiverse and MyMiniFactory which usually offer their models for free, Gambody is more of a marketplace and this model has a price tag of $19.99 at the time of writing.

With this downloaded printing could begin. Harris chose to use PLA here with the printing time coming in more than 200 hours over five separate 3D printers.

Assembled Thanos stands 25 inches tall, or 63.5 centimetres. While breaking out the ruler is one way to get a perspective of that size, see this picture of a hand next to the Infinity Gauntlet for a sense of scale.

While being a titan is one thing, the finishing work and paint job is what really sets this print apart. This process started with removing the supports from the raw plastic before sanding followed by some thinned spot putty.

Then Harris utilises a technique we’ve never heard of before: using an electric tooth brush for sanding. By removing the brush head and replacing it with a small disc of sand paper, he was able to smooth out small parts of the print. This setup is rather unique and great for this application.

Following several rounds of additional putty, sanding, primer and more sanding, the print was ready for paint.

“I use both brush and airbrush. I use a lot of craft acrylic paint, some Vallejo and some Spaz Stix paint. The gold on Thanos is done with the Spaz Stix,” Harris says, “First spraying a gloss black base… this need to be super glossy for the proper effect. Then you mist and only mist a couple layers of mirror chrome. Then that is finished off with candy gold.”

Between colour changes a matte acrylic is used to seal everything in and, after a lot of work, the finished version you see on this page was completed.

Harris is working on several other characters from Marvel and other properties (you can see Thor in the background of one of the pictures below) so check back soon to see those.

If you need further proof that a 3D print can match up with production items from places like Sideshow or Hot Toys, see this Pharah from Overwatch we featured last year. It’s a bit smaller at “only” 36 centimetres tall, but the quality is right up.