DREWspective

For the new year, one of my big craft projects is to make models of my chibiMon characters.

chibiMon was a concept I began devising back in 2003, and initially it was going to be a cartoon series. Unfortunately my passion for animation was killed by the university I went to, and for other reasons it became much more than just a project.

You can find some examples of chibiMon at this link, which goes to my DeviantArt gallery.

I got the idea of making models of the chibiMon characters when I was shopping for scrapbooking and craft materials; I came across some polystyrene balls, and instantly I thought they looked like chibiMon heads.

In this photo I’ve started to construct a chibiMon using a polystyrene ball and some paper made into a cone. I had to poke around on Google for a reminder of cone mathematics, and it was a little hard to follow after all these years, but eventually I got the hang of it.

The height of the frustrum (cone segment) and the diameter of the base were known already, so all that was needed to make a body template was the top radius. A little experimenting had to be done to find the right radius measurement.

But then I noticed that the body was slightly too tall, so I reduced the height of the cone by about a centimetre. I finally managed to get the perfect dimensions.

I had looked around for objects and materials I could use to construct the body. There are some polystyrene mini-bells you can only get online: these might be perfect for the model, but there is no information on the diameters of the top and bottom. I am still stuck on how to make the legs; I’ll have to tackle that one later.