Bull Netch

:netch humming:
I used to think these giant floating shrimp-jellyfish were pretty imposing with their writhing tentacles, mysterious glow and garbled humming. But in the Ascadian Isles of Morrowind, the strange is mundane, the eerie blends into the landscape, and venomous magical-gas-filled jellyfish are gentle domesticated cattle. I  remember picturing how their sacs would be cured into tough leather that would tingle and exhilerate a warrior when worn, because of the residual venom. And I dreamt of poor Dunmeri Netchimen herding the Netches with their spears at the plutocratic estates of noble houses. 

On the model
The Netch is another one those iconic fantasy creatures of The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. This one is a weird synthesis of shrimp and jellyfish that seamlessly blends into the landscape as one of the few friendly creatures... I originally designed this model to appear as if it's actually floating and faintly glowing blue using batteries, but I had to resort to powering it by cable, which takes away from its semblance. The camera doesn't do the slowly fading glow justice though, by eye it's much more homogenous and dim.

How I made the 3D model
I extracted the 3D model from Skyrim Dragonborn, and customized it by separating the legs, the jelly and the sac.  Like with the Silt Strider model, I used the textures as displacement maps to impart a physical texture on the sac, while leaving the jelly and legs smooth, hence the gratuitously large file size. 

How I made the physical model
This model is specifically designed with the detail and precision of SLA in mind. After printing it on my Mars 2 Pro, thoroughly washing and curing it, I sandblasted and airbrushed the legs and sac. I then went through a meticulous process of designing a mold for the jelly that leaves a hollow for the electronics, and then casted the jelly with silicone and a blue dye. I then cut a blue ledstrip to size and soldered it to a tiny Arduino powered by 2x AAA batteries (replaced later by USB cable), and programmed the Arduino to slowly pulse the ledstrip on-and-off. Lastly, I sawed an acrylic rod and inserted it into a plexiglass plate with a hole, punched a hole into the silicone and placed the Netch on the acrylic rod.

If you like to keep things simple, just print the sac_monolithic and the legs, and paint them.

I don't recommend you try to go down the road of incorporating a ledstrip. But if you want to, you should probably design a cavity into sac_jelly to house the electronics.

I do recommend acquiring an acrylic rod to hold the Netch up, it really adds to its appearance. The sac_jelly file does not contain a hole for it because I used a mold, but you can either easily do this yourself or leave me a comment and I'll do it for you.