Over the last year, 3D printers have proven that they are versatile enough to meet the demands of both industry and design. In fact, fashion designers have already been pushing the limits of 3D printed design with shoes and dresses. Now fine art is taking a crack at what 3D printers can do and are already surpassing their wildest dreams.

On Christmas Eve, the Stratasys blog brought us the story of Andre Masters and CJ Munn – artists who wanted to create a sculpture based on the myth of Icarus. As you probably already know, Icarus is famous for having a set of wings that he used to fly through the sky. The sculpture would be easy enough if the artists wanted to sculpt what looked like a pair of wings from clay or metal, but they had their sights set much higher.

Using a 3D printer, the two artists created 200 individual feathers that would eventually make up the wings for their sculpture. To make things even more complicated, the artists made sure each and every feather was unique in some way. They told Stratasys that such a project would be impossible without 3D printing as the cost of producing each feather out of metal was impossible.

Check out the video below to see how they did it:

Image via Stratasys/YouTube