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…

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.

So the shapes have arrived, and we’ve hit a snag as we’ve found out the shapes that were ordered were too small for the existing head pieces.

It also turns out that most of the ordered pieces, which were bought from a shop in the US, could have been ordered over here in the UK! However, these shops had kept themselves very well hidden.
For future reference, a search for pin craft in your favourite search engine should take you to the right place to buy polystyrene shapes. In most cases, you’ll be able to get the parts you’re after.

Where are we up to now? I’ll show you:

I initially made a start on the first three models, painting the head separately from the bodies.

Everything went well, until I had trouble getting the right flesh tone for the white characters. I have a formula for creating a good flesh tone, but unfortunately I didn’t have the right colour paints. In the meantime, I stuck the heads to the bodies.

A trip yesterday to both the London Graphic Centre in Covent Garden, and Cass Art in Leicester Square, turned up six more tubes of acrylic paint and some white gesso primer. As the head shapes were low density (LD) polystyrene, I applied a couple of coats of primer to them, as well as the top part of the body.

You might or might not be able to see it, but there are five different skin colours in the photo: brown, white, olive, pale white and a kind of orange tan white.

Next question is: what is the next step?

I might have solved the problem of how to make the legs: along with the paints, I bought some 12mm balsa wood dowel, which might or might not work as is. I decided on balsa wood as nowhere seems to sell ordinary polystyrene rods, and a request to a company that makes custom polystyrene shapes turned out to be fruitless.

I still have next to no clue as to how to make the arms. Right now I’m toying with the idea of using art straws as a base, and it’s a matter of getting hold of some. Due to my job, I can’t get to any art and crafts store during the week whatsoever.

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.