Nervape Original keeps the size and pose of the very first Nervape I ever printed.
It all started with my interest in making physical things with my own hands.
After Nervape was founded, the character grew from a 2D image into a 3D design. Around the same time, I bought my first resin printer. Resin printing was only just starting to catch on, and mine was a fairly small one. The size of its build plate decided the size of the first physical Nervape.
For someone using a resin printer for the first time, the detail was stunning. It looked almost like a finished product. Over the next year, I tried every setting I could find, resins with different properties, and Nervapes in different sizes. Seeing what was possible, I even went back to a filament printer and made an Original with movable joints. Those experiments and ideas later grew into Nervape Dot and Nervape 3x.
The size that small printer gave me turned out to be just right. In the hand and in the details, it felt like a real product that only needed a little finishing. So I printed a few more, sanded and painted them, and gave them away as gifts. Because the prints had to be hollowed out, each Nervape had two drain holes in its feet. I plugged them with two small magnets, which also gave Nervape a new skill: standing firmly on metal surfaces.
But I soon saw the limits of this "product." Hollow resin prints were sensitive to bumps, heat, and UV light. Spray paint could not hide every flaw, and the surface lacked depth. Most of all, printing and finishing took forever, and it was not good for my health. So I turned to something I had always wanted to try: epoxy resin casting.
After studying every step, I bought some basic tools and made my first silicone mold. With little experience, the gate and parting line had plenty of problems, but I got the materials almost right. I was sure that with a better mold, I could make something truly complete. That was how Nervape Original began to take shape. It just did not have a name yet, or a chip.
As I traveled to more and more events, I kept making resin Nervapes as gifts while thinking about how to improve the mold. I also kept asking myself: if I ever had the perfect mold, would all I could do be to keep copying the exact same Nervape?
To me, every Nervape I printed meant something. Each one felt alive, so I kept even the failed ones. But there were more and more of them, and I started to lose track. Was there a way to mark each one, clearly and permanently?
At the end of 2024, the new mold was ready. The gate moved from the top of the head to the bottom of the feet, where it is hardest to see, and I added air vents at the tips of the fingers. It was also the time of Nervape's first team retreat. I wanted to make a few for my teammates, and found that several of them had chosen the same color. A question that had been on my mind for a whole year came back: how could each physical Nervape have a meaning of its own?
Looking at the gate mark on the bottom of a Nervape's feet, I got the idea to put a chip inside. Many pets carry a microchip, with their records stored in the cloud. Nervape's records would live on the blockchain, where each one could go on living in digital form. In the end, the chip went into the lower back, roughly where the butt is. It fits well there, and a phone can scan it with a single tap.
After our first pop-up in Thailand, we made Original an official product line, made for collectors. I refined the process for the official version and made sure I could produce Nervape Originals of consistent quality, in batches, right in my studio. The first official mold had a standard shape and fixtures, with 3D-printed parts used as fillers when making the mold. It was more efficient, simpler, and more durable. Most important of all, it had a built-in slot to hold the chip in place. Since then, every Nervape Original, whether a finished piece or a test prototype, has its own place on the blockchain.
— Bradley
September 20, 2026
