Reconstruction of prehistoric sculptures

Reconstruction of prehistoric sculptures

In 2017, his first exhibition aimed at an artistic demonstration of the beauty of Greece and Rome took place. He created his works using mainly pencils, ink and dry pastels. In 2019, he expanded his interest to two sectors: One of them is World Historic Shipping - focusing primarily on well-known ships, mostly wrecks. The second is the prehistoric era (prehistory is defined as events that took place before the existence of written records in a given culture or society), from the Upper Neolithic to the Pleistocene. Konstantinos wanted to know the relationship between prehistory and Greek and world mythology.

In the summer of 2020, MADE Group, a non-profit platform for innovative social projects and creative synergies, asked Konstantinos to join the group of STARTS project developers. Project financed by the European Commission. The team worked on concepts to develop installations recreating palaeontological creatures in collaboration with foundations, engineers, artists and local developers.

In March 2020, his attention was drawn to an article in the New York Times about the skull of the so-called Smilodon Populator from the Pleistocene period found in Uruguay.

The Smilodon Populator inhabited South America. He was much larger and stronger than his North American brother Smilodon Fatalis. He was able to feed on even the most gigantic trophies of his time - he was at the top of the food chain. Allometric equations show that this unusually large skull once belonged to a 435 kg individual "smashed by Hulk". He was twice the size of an African lion and with huge fangs.

The artist was so fascinated by this beast that he came up with the idea of ​​reconstructing most of the animal's skeleton. So besides the skull, he had to add the lower jaw, neck, shoulder, thoracic, lumbar, pelvic sacrum and tail. Using clay parts on iron reinforcement, he revived the reptile skeleton.

Step by step he studied the entire osteological / osteomorphic structure and concluded that the skull found in Uruguay was 13% larger than that of the famous and large Smilodon Bonaerensis described by Muñis in 1845, therefore he also enlarged the bones by 13%. He spent over 1,200 hours (7 months) and nearly 60 kg of clay to complete the iron base. He created the specimen on a scale of 1: 1, which translates into a total length of almost three meters, measured from the front of the skull to the tail.

Digitizing Sculpture: Sharing 3D scanning data for education and research

After the sculpture was completed, the precious and fragile pieces of the giant were transported from Ioannina to Athens. The sculpture was transferred to modern 3DHUB scanning facilities in Greece. 3DHUB has been working with SHINING 3D for several years and sells EinScan 3D scanners throughout Greece. Thus, the EinScan-Pro HD multi-functional handheld 3D scanner turned out to be the perfect tool for 3D scanning. The scanner allowed Konstantinos to transfer every element of the skeleton sculpture to the 3D world.

The entire process took 3 days. It provided high resolution object models suitable for both commercial and educational use.

The team decided to use the EinScan-Pro HD to complete the concept due to its unique ability to capture very high details in a short time. All parts of the fully assembled sculpture were scanned seamlessly.