DREWspective

I’ve just come back from a quick trip to Hobbycraft, where I bought just a couple of things for a small project. I’m still waiting for my damn foam shapes to arrive, so in the meantime I thought I’d keep myself busy.

It was clearly raining outside, yet they gave me a paper bag for the few things I bought. I’m all for environmentally friendly and all that, but I didn’t think it was appropriate at all. If using a full-size carrier bag wasn’t necessary, they could have use smaller ones. Or, at the very least, use stronger paper bags. Just a little gripe.

Anyway it was raining, and I was carrying a large umbrella and some food, so I stuffed the paper bag as best I could into my coat pocket.

I got on the bus, having waited goodness knows long (it arrived as soon as I turned my back and headed for the tube station!), and sat down. Luckily I checked my pocket for the goods… because it wasn’t there!

I got off the bus immediately and retraced my steps back to the store. Fortunately, I managed to find the soaking wet paper bag on the ground, just outside the retail park, with everything still in it. It was truly a miracle.

The moral of the story for me is: never leave home without a spare carrier bag.

I’ve been in negotiations with a US company that sells various three-dimensional foam shapes.

Unfortunately their online shop is designed so that customers must reside in the US, so I sent an e-mail asking whether they’d ship to the UK. Luckily they did.

The communication process was painfully slow, and one of the items in their catalogue was no longer being made. A week later (yesterday), a payment went through on my card; I found out through a call from the card company, who gave me quite a scare.

So right now I’m waiting just on the shapes. I’ve finally received the paints, which came sometime last week.

You know what? I wrote a whole article about this from the draft I did last week. But the weblog editor fucked up and didn’t save anything, so I’m going to leave it.

Over a pub lunch, I was trying to figure out how to make the legs. The difficulty came with the fact that the legs are slanted a little bit.

I came up with a couple of solutions:

• Obtain some polystyrene/wood tubes, cut them down to size and stick discs at the top to create the wide part of the legs. This would have the advantage of making sturdy legs, but the disadvantage of requiring yet more materials (and buying at least a hacksaw).

• Make a structure for one leg using some tough card, and strategically wrap funky foam around it to create the illusion of a partial cylinder. Two of these would be stuck back to back to create two "legs". The major advantage would be the use of existing materials; the disadvantages being time-consuming measuring and cutting, as well as the risk of uneven and wobbly legs.

I gave the second method a try, as it was the least expensive and immediately executable. While it was very time-consuming and hard to cut the card to the right shape, the result was rather pleasing (photo above). One rather important matter became evident: the foam would have to be cut perfectly to make this method work.

The journey continues…!

I’ve been very eager to start painting the heads, but my set of acrylic paints has gone missing. I’ve had to order a new set over the Internet, and they would have arrived on the 31st, had it not been for a lazy postman/family member.

Instead, I turned my attention to the body parts I was working on. I’ve not received a quote or email from either of the places I made an enquiry to, so I decided to proceed using a frustrum made of corrugated cardboard. I’d already made one, so I made a second body out of the same card.

It was very hard to get the perfect round shape, and one thing that became apparent was the thickness of the card; it would invariably affect the dimensions of the model, though its thickness means it would be simpler to stick together.

It was time to introduce funky foam, or fun foam: a very interesting and versatile material I found on my travels. Funky foam is easy to cut, is nowhere near as messy as paint, and can be layered to create some stunning effects. Funky Foam comes in many different colours, and was a perfect choice for this project. Try not to get carried away, though, with buying several sheets (as I did).
I cut the same frustrum template out of a white sheet of funky foam, and glued it to the card frustrum to make a body. The foam added a little to the total thickness of the body, but it was no problem whatsoever; each of the chibiMon are of different sizes, and these differences can easily be factored in at a later time.

It will get a little more complicated over time, as elaborate clothing such as jackets and sweaters are made. I have also yet to decide on how to make the arms and hands (along with the legs and feet).

I should also mention that there are around 18 planned figures to make: the 12 existing chibiMon characters plus some other additions.

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.