Wednesday, May 5, 2010 Scale Troubles

Previous WIP pictures I provided showed the huge difference in height between Yuffie and my completed models of Cloud and Tifa. The above image is the result of increasing Yuffie's scale to best match with Cloud and Tifa.

Here's the problem, Yuffie's proportions are that of a "kid", therefore she was definitely small to begin with using her original scale. By scaling her up, it became more like "Honey, I blew up the kid", so her proportions are way off compared to Tifa and Cloud.

I will have to go with the original scale meant for Yuffie.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010 Project Yuffie Kisaragi

Next up, Yuffie Kisaragi!

Well.... I got nothing more to say than that. Stay tuned I suppose.....

edit:

That's as close as I can get to the pose depicted in the reference pic. Although, I still need to tweak it just a bit more, especially around the elbow area for her left arm. Just the right arm, both legs and those blasted fingers would need posing now.

edit again:
Fixed the elbow.... Stay tuned....

final edit:

Here we go! Finished the pose, so all's that left now is to export her to .3DS and play around with Yuffie in Meta. After that it's onto Sketchup to separate Yuffie into various components just like how I did Tifa.

So, before I do all that though... there is one slight issue that needs to be resolved. I checked up on the FF Wiki to look up Yuffie's height compared to Tifa and Cloud and something is amiss here.


Yuffie is too short! Her height difference with Tifa is supposed to be 2 inches, for Cloud it's 5 inches! However, having all 3 of them standing next to each other, it's definitely quite obvious enough that Yuffie isn't in scale anymore! I double checked on this by extracting all 3 models and same thing, Yuffie still turns out too short. Now that I think back on it... did Yuffie ever appear right next to Cloud and Tifa in KH2? Most likely, she didn't....

In order for Yuffie to be in scale with both Cloud and Tifa, I need to scale her 3d model up before I do any further editing... geez.

Stay tuned...

Friday, April 9, 2010 WIP: The Battleship

Finally, some progress shots of my Battleship project!

After weeks of procrastinating, I now have progress pics to show. The build went smoothly, everything went according to plan, especially how I predicted that the hull and deck would have a noticeable gap on the sides. Since the body of the model is composed of 3 components, I decided to try out a different method in building the left and right side of the hull just to test that "theory" of mine. (I'll not go into detail on how I did it.)

However, the area that would connect all 3 components together would be noticeable, but it will be covered up by various other parts so it won't be an issue in the end.

Anyway, as you can see from the progress pic above, the left/right cannon can be positioned however you wish. So best to try out various other positions before you decide to glue the cannons permanently into place.

Only painful and tedious part was actually building that small damn skull.... -_-

Friday, March 19, 2010 SPP1: Sneak-Peek

"SPP" stands for "Secret Project Pack", the number 1 means it's the first project pack that I'll be making for the year. Of course the 2nd pack happens to be the Mandragoras, which you already know.

The picture above shows just what I've been doing with the project thus far. I'm already in the building phase for the first model in the pack. Just so you know, there's a total of 8 models and I'm hoping to get them all done. So far, I like the results of what I've built and I'll continue on. The picture could be a dead give away for what the project is... so if you manage to figure it out somehow, keep it to yourself. (or else I'll keep this project to myself and not release it, which is not a problem at all)

Yes, you'll have the opportunity to actually "customize" your model by choosing different colored paper that suits your fancy. For my models though, I'll only use red, don't have any special reason why, just like like it being red that's all. Also, this saves you on colored ink.

The models are slightly bigger than the Moogles, well some of them are at least. As for the difficulty... well, since when did I release an easy model? If I were to rate the difficulty between 1-10, I'd give it a solid 5. In case you're wondering, I rate the entire Moogle pack a 2, so that'll give you a good idea of how difficult the models will be.

As for a release date... well I got none. It all depends on how things go and if I need to do any changes and stuff.

Anyway, what matters most to me is the end result, I don't care how hard or easy the model actually is, as long as my final build looks exactly or close to the 3d model, then I'm happy.

Stay tuned if you're interested to know more about the SPP.

Friday, March 5, 2010 WIP Project: KH Heartless Battleship

I've started "work" on the first proposed project of mine for 2010, the Heartless Battleship. It's actually a rather interesting and amusing project I decided to start on, something which I doubt anyone else would find enjoyable (aside from myself), but who cares anyway.

Alot of edits went into this project, it's not obvious of course to anyone looking at it at first, but if you happen to have the actual raw 3D model; then you'll definitely see significant changes made.

The picture above shows just one of the edits I made. Originally the hull and deck are 2 separate components as seen in diagram A. My original idea was to add additional faces below the deck and the top of the hull, come assembly time it's a simple matter of gluing the top and bottom together. Here's the problem with that idea, the hull is meant to be round, so there's no flat surface on the side of it. Therefore the sides on the deck will not glue flat on the hull, and instead would possibly leave a noticeable gap on the sides.

2nd idea of course means to have a single component instead. Building the deck first and then adding the pieces to make up the hull as you build. Sounds easy, but also fiddly to do, especially since I aim to keep this model the same height as Tonberry. If anyone has built Tonberry then you know how fiddly it is handling a round object.

3rd and final idea is what you see in diagram B. Divided the model into 3 separate components, each one having a piece of the deck and hull. I added faces on each component so gluing them together would be easy (remember how I built Tifa, that's how this model would be assembled in the end). This method is spread out all around the model in areas that I deemed necessary to have them (no reason for me to make things too easy). So think of this model like building... er... a rounded.... uhm... box... so it should be easy.

I'm almost done with unfolding and will start building the model tomorrow.

Also, just a heads up: I'm already halfway done with my 1st Secret Project for the year. It's a "pack"... a rather "huge" and "extensive" pack. You'll see what they are come release time.

Sunday, January 31, 2010 2010 Projects

I stated before that I'd want to at least make a release once a month, however given the difference of difficulty that these models have, that won't happen at all.

Anyway to start things, here are the first batch of proposed projects for 2010.

From the MMORPG Dekaron:

From Kingdom Hearts:

From Kingdom Hearts 2:

From Final Fantasy XII

And finally, what I would consider a long term project, my Fable avatar:

If anyone was actually counting, that's a total of 13 models. However, I'll count the Mandragora Family as a single project, so that makes it a total of 9 projects. I still have 3 models that I didn't mention, those are my secret projects for the year. They will be revealed in due time of course.

Also I don't want to have a schedule, coz that just makes it sound like "work" rather than a hobby that I enjoy wasting my time with, so I'll release whatever model I end up building first.

Anyway, that's it, back to "work".

Tuesday, January 5, 2010 2010 and Beyond

Well, it's finally 2010.. and also it's the final semester before I end my junior year. What does that exactly spell out for little 'ol Fezco and his papercrafting hobby? Means more time for me to torture paper beyond recognition!

Currently in my WIP projects are 4 half finished Pokemons (the PaperPokes folks would grill me for taking so long) 1 Kingdom Hearts 2 Secret Project (no it's not Sora or Sephiroth) and 2 MMORPG models that I recently discovered to be quite entertaining.

Current projects that I already have in my MUST-BUILD folder got pushed down the ladder, unfortunately, but I'll get to em over the summer. They are already printed out, I just need to build em.

Anyway, my goal for the year is to actually make at most 12 models (that's 1 model per month). If I'm lucky I may build more, but 12 as it is, is going to be tough. The models can be from any of the following games that I actually have access to (meaning I own the games): FFX, FFX-2, FFXII, KH, KH2 and the MMORPG models I mentioned above (yes the game is a secret)

Yeah... 2010 is starting to look like a rather busy year for me. Hopefully though, this year I'll manage to LEARN MORE and further REFINE my current skill sets. (currently, simplifying is a priority that I'll need to improve on... like, a whole lot)

Well that's just about it, 2010 and beyond.......