DREWspective

Planning to kill four birds with one stone (reworking my large aquarium and looking for a special paper punch), I headed down to Brentford to visit my favourite stores. I also popped in to Pets at Home.

Imagine the shock I had as I entered the garden centre in Syon Park, ready to spend another hour or so browsing in Craft Central, only to find…

…it had been completely replaced, with a set of garden furniture.

I don’t know what’s happened to it, but it’s a damn shame that yet another good craft shop has bitten the dust. What is happening to them?

In other news, though, I struggled to carry two heavy bags - one with sand, one with gravel - all the way back home. I ended up purchasing a trolley to help.

Last night I was putting the finishing touches to my latest YouTube video. Unfortunately it didn’t convert properly when scaling it down from DV AVI to MP4 (or something), so it’s not up yet.

But this video isn’t another Chadwarden video - though I still plan to make a few more - nor is it even anything new. In fact, it’s a Flash animation I made almost six years ago.

With almost 20 different Chadwarden videos on my YouTube account not including his original ones or my commentaries, I was getting worried that I’d be typecast as "the guy who just makes Chadwarden videos". (I will tell you, it’s very addictive! There is so much content, many people have made parodies from just one of the videos!) I’ve since wanted to do something new, but wasn’t sure what.

I eventually stumbled upon some past work, which is usually difficult - I’m the kind of person who gets very nervous when looking at stuff they made previously, and very nervous when other people look at my stuff.

The movie in question was originally submitted to Newgrounds (when it was worth going to as a site), and scored around 3.5 out of 5. A score of 4 or 5 meant your video pandered to the Mario/Final Fantasy fanboy crowd, who somehow made the site their own.

Usually I would cringe at the sight of a movie I’d made years ago, embarrassed about how random my ideas were. Thoughts like "what was I thinking?!" would fly through my head.

But strangely enough, I was surprised. This movie had stood the test of time, and was far better than I’d expected! (in my opinion, anyway.)

You’ll get to see the movie sometime tonight, provided all goes well on the conversion front. Let me know what you think of it when it drops. http://uk.youtube.com/user/drewmaughan

While moving my new three foot fish tank upstairs into my room, I accidentally knocked my pimp cup over. It was barely a two-foot drop, but it smashed into pieces.

Was I mad? Yes I was. If there hadn’t been so much stuff in the room, it might still be here.

Am I moping about it? No.

I might have lost the original: a bargain brandy glass, a good fortune in cheap rhinestones, and hours of baking time an labour. I haven’t lost the blueprints, however, and I can always make a new one.

Time to raid eBay!

I almost forgot to mention…

Over the weekend, I’d finally completed the first chibiMon model!

And it looks like…

Well, on this scale it would be impossible to make it manufacturer quality. But I have one completed, and that’s all that matters!

By far the most difficult part was applying the arms and legs; I knew that getting it wrong would destroy the rest of the work, seeing as it was looking good already. Nevertheless, I had to try.

Having difficulty with sticking the arms on properly, I decided to make a small "lip" of foam at the top of the arm, by cutting away some of the pipe cleaner, straw and surrounding foam. There was then enough space to stick the arm down, and it was a matter of holding it in place as it dried.

Which led to the final, most challenging bit: the legs.

Using the pieces of balsa dowel I’d cut a while ago, I shaped them a little with my trusty pound shop craft knife to make them look more like legs. Then I took one of the small polystyrene eggs I’d bought from the US, and cut them in half using the same knife. To make joining legs and feet, I had to cut the polystyrene some more to form shoes.
Once the pieces were glued together, I gave them a coat of primer just to be sure. In most cases only the feet (or shoes) would be painted, while the legs would be turned into trousers or pants using foam. In this case, the feet were painted in black (or just a very dark grey).

Once that had dried, the legs were covered in blue foam. The heating tool proved useful once again in helping to shape and stretch the foam, creating a desired, slight overlap over the feet. The join between the legs had to be preserved using a toothpick, as the glue dried.

By far the most awkward bit was attaching the legs to the rest of the figure; this was where a band saw, or even setting up my jigsaw (or better still, a hacksaw and mitre), would have come in handy. To my horror, the tops of the legs were not straight, and no amount of cutting with the craft knife would solve it.

The end result was unfortunately a wonky -looking model, but even so it is able to stand on its own.

Excellent!

Now 17 more to go…

Some very exciting news about the project has surfaced in the last couple of days. Unfortunately none of it involves receiving any money as yet.

First of all, the bad news: because of copyright issues on my part, I will not be posting any more photos of the work in progress until after they’re complete. (I know nobody who reads DREWspective has ever stolen an idea from anyone, ever.)

Now the good news, and there’s plenty of it. The first bit of good news goes as follows…

Remember that decal paper I bought a while back? Well, I’ve had the idea of using it to transfer designs for the chibiMon’s faces, instead of risking drawing them in pencil, painting over the outlines and getting it wrong.

I’ve done a trial run with one model and it’s worked. The only drawback is that the decal didn’t stick down as well as I’d liked, so you can still see pockets of air. It might have something to do with the head being made out of low density (LD) polystyrene.

The second bit of good news is that I may have figured out how to make the legs.

Last week I bought some 12mm balsa wood dowel, and have begun cutting it into 3cm lengths. Fortunately balsa wood can be cut using an ordinary craft knife, so there was arguably no real need to buy that rotary tool.

(However, a trip to Hobbycraft yesterday revealed that the exact same kit was selling for £120 - four times the price I bought it for! It turns out that, for most items, Hobbycraft is actually more expensive than smaller art shops.)

Now it’s just the feet I’m concerned about; though I plan to cut some tiny polystyrene egg shapes in half, they may not be big enough to accommodate the dowel. If I had access to a lathe, things might be simpler.

The third bit of good news is to do with the arms. Yesterday I was at Hobbycraft, yet again, to get some art straws (necessary for sticking material onto). Having hovered around the polystyrene shapes section yet again, I came across packs of compressed cotton balls. These were perfect for making the hands: not only were they not perfect spheres, soft and flexible, and the right size, but they had holes in them already. To boot, they probably don’t need a coat of primer either.
Unfortunately I also have more polystyrene balls in the post, as I had gotten far too impatient with making the arms. Not a problem, because I could always sell them.

The fourth bit is quite a groundbreaking discovery: it turns out that funky foam can be moulded using an embossing heat tool. After a trial run last night while dressing one of the chibiMon, it appears to work; I was able to stretch the foam to size, though it took some work to get it in place.
This means that it might be possible to make the weird and interesting hairdos without using copious amounts of Fimo or some other material. We shall see.