Finishing Up Project 1

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It's Definitely Bespoke

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After a long journey of hard work, I'm finally done! Well, mostly. I've gotten it to a point where I really like the results! Earlier this week I started the final process by printing off my print sheets.

Last week I scaled these up from my first print test. For ease of use as well as the fact that I personally think bigger is better for showing the details of the figure. And then began the assembling part.

I used clear Elmer's glue and a teeny tiny brush, as well as small tweezers. This project would have been a challenge with out tweezers! I also used the end of a pencil for pressing tabs together that were in more narrower parts of the figure like the legs.

Some parts I needed the digital model in front of me to fully figure out. Notably the legs and hair. I basically just followed the topology lines on the figure in Rhino to figure out the IRL one. There are also a few tabs that only fit together if the paper is bent a certain way, which was another puzzle at times. The hair took a very, very long time, but I figured it out!

Some parts I colored while they were flat, others I colored once finished. It was pretty easy to color either way, but obviously coloring while flat was the ideal. Some parts I knew were going to be colored black I didn't do while flat, so I could still see the crease lines while folding. I have to say, having origami as an occasional hobby definitely helps with some of the folds I had to make, or angles I manipulated the paper to be in. ESPECIALLY the hair.

Here's a concerning pile of body parts.

When assembling this gal, there were a few small problems. I used hot glue to attach the arms, and assemble most of the glove for more strength (especially for delicate parts like the fingers. With the legs, they had a not so fun tendency to kind of bend when the upper body was set on them. Not enough to fall over, but I could tell she was unstable.

So I grabbed some wire and made her a little armature for her lower body. I swore I took pictures, but I guess not! But the process was basically twisting some jewelry wire for some extra sturdiness and making a flat loop on each end. I then hot glued one side to the bottom of the hips, and the other to the top of the boots. It was nice and hidden, and held her together in a supportive way.

And here's her almost done! Installing the face was hard, because closing that shape of both the face and hair was very touch and go. I ended up cutting a flat piece of paper and gluing it over the bottom half pretty sturdily so the neck could sit on it more evenly. I added funny stickers because I thought it would be fun.

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And here is where she is now! I'm really proud with how she turned out. I think this was such a cool project and I'm really glad I got to both experiment/learn Blender and get back into paper crafting. For times sake I did have to minus a few parts that weren't working for me. Notably, the backpack and goggles. If you look at the printing page...yeah, it was not fun to attempt to make. 

But I am including her in a presentation in two weeks for a video game development class, so if I have time, my goal is to just remake the goggles in Rhino directly and print them so they're much easier to make. For the backpack, it didn't import with the model into Rhino for some reason - meaning I totally missed it until the end. Oops. So this is a soft 'end' for this project. Maybe I'll include her in future blog posts as I finish her off completely.

I'm not going to worry too much about the little mistakes. I already extended this by a week, and I think its perfectly fine where it is. I'm also really excited to develop my idea for next week. I hope you liked watching the process as much as I enjoyed doing it!

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(Here's the final design of the character she's based on!)