New! Some backstory about the action figures I made a few years ago. All these scenes glow in the dark! It’s the Sheriff, Cactus-head, Elma and Arms & Hammers.
Tag: action figures
Printing Action Figures
Following up on the idea of making action figures and monsters from other toys, I have been experimenting with scanning my figures and then printing copies of them.
To start with, Leezle and I downloaded a MakerBot project from Thingverse.
We printed it.
Someone at Thingverse commented that it’s “Sad that it’s such a lo-poly model. :/” Still, it was a fun start.
Next, we scanned some of the cowboy figures I made.
We had a few false starts and bad scans – this is a time consuming process (noted by Leezle). My favorite 4 armed cowboy is red plastic, and it did not play well with the red laser scanner. I switched to blue, who is a rather lumpy. I’ve read that painting a figure white helps, but I’m not ready to sacrifice red to that (also, he’s currently living the March Madness Diorama).
After the scan was complete, I worked on cleaning up the figure in MeshMixer.
The Madness of March: Spring Fever
Here’s a closer look at the Dioramas I took to Diorama-rama II.
To address the theme of “March Madness,” I thought I’d ignore the sportsball and explore the strange, strange energy that Springtime brings:
- How weird I think Easter is as a “holiday,” which combines egg laying bunnies and people rising from the dead (z o m b i e s), and
- Spring Fever!
I started with Spring Fever, as it was low hanging melons, er, fruit. I have a couple of “cute” tins that I’ve never been sure how to use, so I added bunny tails and a blue eyed blonde.
Next, I wanted to use another odd box that’s been on my shelf for a while, which bears the inscription Recuerdo de Esquipulas (I remember Esquipulas).
Esquipulas is a municipality in eastern eastern Guatemala. This city is known as the main point of Central Catholic pilgrimage, as it is the place where they worship the Black Christ of Esquipulas. It is also sometimes an alternate Universe.
I was able to add some of my action figures (cactus head and surrender cowboy), as well as Ms. April from the 1970’s. It looks fabulous in a dark room when the interior diorama light is on.
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In my mind, these two pieces actually work together. Neither of them rely heavily on paper cut drawings, which is something I’ve tried only once before.
For Ray Harryhausen
These plastic skeletons totally reminded me of Ray Harryhausen’s work. I “merged” several figures by melting them together. I’m still not sure what to do with them – below is a simple diorama test. I opted to NOT draw the details on the background. I think it would work better with that detail, and I may add it later.
New Figures
Here are more melted figure prototypes. See also: Make your own Monsters and Make your own Action Figures. Sold Separately.
Make Your Own Action Figures
When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time wishing I had a long skinny monkey tail like the Pink Panther. I imagined how I’d use it to help perform everyday tasks. I still think it would be useful, although I’d opt in for a pointy devil tail these days, which is good for spearing circus peanuts.
When I was a kid, I got in really bad trouble for playing with matches. I had a lot of army men, which I thought were kind of boring. I decided they needed to undergo genetic anthropomorphic mutation to become more interesting/useful. So, in my basement laboratory, with my assistant little-boy-from-next-door, I set out to create better toys. The trouble was, little-boy-from-next-door burned himself with a match, which brought a world of parent trouble down on me and my genetic anthropomorphic mutation toy laboratory. If I’d had a tail, I wouldn’t have needed an assistant in the first place and wouldn’t have lost my laboratory.
Some of my creations were awesome – a three armed ax wielding warrior with no head, a two headed cowboy, a barrel chested headless monster…etc.
Being an adult is awesome because I don’t have to worry about parents shutting down my lab. I only have to worry about the fumes from melting plastic. NOTE: KIDS – DO NOT DO THIS WITHOUT PARENTAL SUPERVISION.
I’ll be back – there’s some pretty interesting action happening in the backyard right now.