Ocean animals

shiftdel

Member
Hi, I just want to show my building progress for some of the fabulous sea animals of the Chinese (Taiwanese?) book "Make my own ocean animals".

In the book, you get what you see in the first pic, 2 clownfish, 2 butterfly fish, 1 seahorse, 1 caretta turtle, 1 whale shark, 1 orca, and 1 fiddler crab (the best of the bunch, IMHO).

Seems that they put the animals in crescent order of difficult, and none is in actual scale (the smaller ones are scaled up, and the bigger ones, logically scaled down).

I was looking for this book for years, but was unable to understand Chinese to order it, but some time ago I found a site called Yes Asia, with English text, so I could order mine.

I made scans of all sheets, so if I mess something, I will be able to try again (please, don't ask for a copy).

The second pic shows the whale shark parts already cut, almost ready to build, I still need to score some tabs before to build it.

I will post more progress pics as soon as possible.

I plan to build them all, although I'm thinking about to scale down all the smaller ones to 1:1 scale, so I can build a scenary...
 

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cjwalas

Member
Glad to see someone building these. I look forward to your reports on the quality and fit as you go.
Chris
 

Art Decko

Member
Looks like a very interesting model, I'm eager to see how it (and the others) turn out.

By the way, the Chinese name of the book is different, it's "My Ocean Friends". :)
 

shiftdel

Member
Sure, me too, I paid 12 bucks plus shipping for these babies, so...

I will post any update as soon I have it, the lack of spare time is my main problem, but I think it is an everyone problem ;)
 

shiftdel

Member
Started building this today...

Well it is harder than I anticipated; the lack of any internal strut, and the fact that the author chose to make the body one large piece, makes the build of certain areas very challenging.

I was planning to make an ilustrated step-by-step report, but my camera run out of bateries, so I shot few pics of my progress, I will post them tomorrow, probably with some pics of the finished model.
 

shiftdel

Member
Here they are, the pics that I was able to shot before my bateries die. They show my initial building progress.

I started building the rear part, but this decision later proved flawed, as the mouth is a bit challenging to build, and cannot be left to the end, so I did have to build the front and rear part, leaving the center of the body to the end, which was a pain in the *** to build, without any former to sustain the shape of the body.

However, even starting from the mouth will left you with the tail to the end, and the tail is also trick to build, and will have the same problem, the lack of an internal support to aid the gluing.
 

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shiftdel

Member
Here they are pics of the finished model.

This is a very attractive model, but clearly it is not for kids or unexperienced builders.

Another point to consider were the fins attachment to the body; by lack of an internal support, you will need to hold the fin till the glue dry enough to sustain it by itself, I don't need to say how tedious it is.

So my final tips are:
1 - start from the mouth, gluing one side at a time (example: top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right), so move to the other tabs in sequence from front to rear
2 - before gluing the rest of the body, make holes at the fins attachments into the body, to make easier to attach the fins
3 - once done, try something to reinforce the body, as it will lack support when gluing the fins (I planning to coat it with dope)
4 - insert a pin of rolled cardstock into the fins, it's easy as the fins are supposed to have depth inside (look at the pics, they are not simple 2 faces of paper glued together)
 

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cjwalas

Member
Thanks for the report on this one. It does sound more challenging than it looks. But as you said it is a very attractive model and well worth the effort! Are you planning on doing the rest of the models as well?
Chris
 

shiftdel

Member
Thanks guys, now, I just need to print the Orca. I will reduce the size by 20 % to make it in scale with the whale shark, they will look great together, I guess.

This time I will study more the model before starting gluing.
 

shiftdel

Member
After a long time I was able to start building another ocean animal from that Chinese book, this time I did the Orca, slight reduced in size to match the shark whale size. Actually it ended up a bit smaller then I would like, at a corresponding size of 8,07 m (17.5 cm) comparing with the 12 m (26 cm) of the shark.

Anyway, following is my build report:

Parts - it's important to roll the body part before start gluing anything


I did start cautiously to glue some tabs on the body, one at a time, because of the complex nature of the single part body


While the body dried, I did build the fins, the first pic is before the edge coloring, the last after (easy task, as it is most black)
 

Elliott

Senior Member
Glad you are working on the Orca again. Looking forward to seeing you finish it. It's great to see you back posting again too!
 
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