DREWspective

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…

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.