I didn't do much hard digital work on this project. The Godzilla model was pulled from Thingiverse, and I believe it was this one.

Anyway, the motivation was that my wife wanted a Godzilla in her garden. I'm quite sure I didn't coin the term "Gardenzilla", but that's obviously what it is, and we couldn't stop saying it.

Initially, I wanted to go a bit creative with it and saw an idea on Etsy where someone used it as a succulent planter. I thought that was so cool, so I pulled the model into Blender and boolean operated out it's back.

the Godzilla model in blender

the Godzilla model in blender from the back

When all was said and done, it looked great! My wife was happy I did this for her, but extremely skeptical that it could hold dirt and baby succulents, especially at its size. She turned it into an air planter instead.

the Gardenzilla air planter

But also - she REALLY wanted and envisioned a much larger Godzilla in her garden surrounded by plants. I have a Kobra Max 3D printer and it only goes so big, so I just created a bust from my model and scaled it up as big as I could possibly fit in the printer. This actually meant rotating the model at weird angle so everything did fit at the largest size.

90 printing hours later, and one successful filament swap in between, we had a Gardenzilla! Of course, I had a lot of support material to remove because of the weird rotation angle, but it was worth it! I drilled a hole in the bottom and added a garden stake to keep it in place.

larger Gardenzilla in the garden