Introduction: When a Broadcaster Chooses Craft Over CGI

In January 2026, as the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics approached, the BBC opened its coverage with something unusual: a stop-motion title sequence in which trails of real fire blaze down the Dolomites behind miniature winter athletes. The film, titled “Trails Will Blaze,” was created by BBC Creative and London production company NOMINT — and it was built on the backs of 700 individually 3D-printed figurines, shot frame-by-frame (source: TVBEurope).

At a time when most advertising visuals are generated digitally, one of the world’s biggest broadcasters did the opposite: it printed hundreds of physical models, built fire-safe sets, and filmed the result one frame at a time. For the 3D printing industry — and especially for anyone producing custom figurines — the campaign is quietly significant.

The Film: “Trails Will Blaze”

The brief was demanding: create a piece that worked both as a promotional trail and as the title sequence for the BBC’s entire Winter Olympics broadcast, celebrating “record-breaking, boundary-pushing athletes.”

BBC Creative senior creatives Paul Bailey and Russell Hendrie found their concept in a single word — trailblazers. “Every Winter Olympic campaign uses snow and ice,” they explained, “so we knew that trails of fire blazing down mountains would stand out a mile” (LBBOnline). The soundtrack sealed the theme: Verdi, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, giving the piece what the creatives called “something epic and Italian.”

How 700 3D Printed Figurines Brought It to Life

The production numbers behind the film read like a manufacturing project as much as a creative one:

• 700 individually 3D-printed miniature figures of athletes, each printed separately and animated frame-by-frame
• 14 controlled combustion techniques — real flame effects rather than digital fire — providing natural illumination on set
• Specialist fire-safe studios and a team of professional pyrotechnicians on a stop-motion shoot — likely a first for the medium

The workflow ran from digital to physical: scenes were first laid out in 3D software to plan camera angles and figure placement, then realized as hundreds of printed models on hand-built sets.

NOMINT creative director Yannis Konstantinidis described the project as “technically demanding and creatively exhilarating… From our very first conversation with BBC Creative, we knew we had the chance to pursue the near-impossible. It demanded absolute trust and a willingness to take real creative risks.”

Bailey and Hendrie were equally candid about the production reality: “It was probably the only stop-motion animation to be filmed in specialist fire-safe studios with a team of pyrotechnicians! The biggest, and most exciting, challenge was trying to visualise what the film would look like. There was a lot of trial, error and leaps of faith involved.”

Why 3D Printing Was the Enabler

Stop-motion has always been a numbers game — every frame is a photograph, and every pose needs a physical object. What changed is that producing hundreds of consistent, pose-specific miniatures by hand is slow and expensive, while 3D printing makes it practical.

Consider what a production like this requires from its models:

• Consistency across hundreds of units. A figure filmed in frame 40 must match the one in frame 400. Digital manufacturing guarantees that repeatability.
• Pose variation at scale. Skiers, skaters, curlers, ski jumpers — each discipline needs its own geometry, and many poses per discipline.
• Speed. Tight broadcast deadlines leave no room for weeks of hand model-making. A print farm can produce 700 figures in days.
• Replaceability. When a figure is damaged during a combustion take, printing a duplicate is trivial; remaking it by hand is not.

This is the same production logic that has quietly made 3D printing the backbone of collectible manufacturing. Earlier this year, Mimaki produced limited-edition, artist-designed miniature golf bag collectibles for the Cleeks Golf Club at the 2026 LIV Golf tournament — full-color replicas printed in one piece, in runs of just 25 per design (we covered that story here). Different sport, different printer class, identical principle: short-run physical objects, produced digitally, that fans and audiences can hold.

Craft as a Statement in the AI Era

Perhaps the most telling detail is what the BBC creatives said when asked about technology: “I hate to bring this back to AI, but I hope the industry will see the value and importance of keeping real craft in advertising. If we’re trying to excite our audience about the incredible human achievements of the Olympics, let’s make the ads incredible human achievements too!”

That sentiment — physical, handcrafted, verifiable production as a premium differentiator — is spreading across creative industries. And ironically, it leans on 3D printing: the digital tool that makes “real craft” affordable enough to do at broadcast scale. The BBC itself has form here, having used 3D-printed stop-motion elements in its Winter Olympics campaigns as far back as 2022.

What This Means for Custom Figurine Businesses

A BBC title sequence is not a customer order — but it does three things for the custom figurine market:

• It normalizes 3D printed figurines as premium objects. Millions of viewers saw printed miniatures presented as prestige craft, not cheap novelty.
• It demonstrates the production model brands now expect: fast turnaround, consistent quality across hundreds of pieces, and design freedom per unit.
• It feeds demand downstream. Sports and entertainment merchandising increasingly runs on limited-run physical collectibles — the exact segment that print farms serve best.

The operational lesson is consistency. Broadcast and commercial clients don’t just need figurines printed; they need every unit inspected, color-matched, and finished to the same standard. That quality discipline — not just printer count — is what wins repeat contracts.

How TT3DPrint Can Help

At TT3DPrint, custom figurines are our core business. Our farm of 220+ Bambu Lab printers produces action figures, collectibles, fidget toys, and creative gifts for clients worldwide, with slicing review, print monitoring, and quality inspection on every order. From a single prototype to a batch of hundreds, we deliver consistent results — worldwide shipping included.

Planning a limited-edition run, event merchandise, or a custom figurine project? Contact us for a quote — samples are free; you only cover shipping.

Conclusion

“Trails Will Blaze” succeeded because it did what CGI increasingly cannot: it made audiences feel that something real happened on screen. The 700 3D printed figurines behind it were not a gimmick — they were the enabling production technology that made ambitious physical craft viable on a broadcast deadline. As brands keep reaching for authenticity, the ability to produce consistent, beautiful physical objects at speed will only grow more valuable. For custom printing businesses, that is very good news.