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…

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…!