Ren Needs Help!

BazookaJo

Member
Apr 2, 2006
317
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UK
www.bazookajo.me.uk
But he'll have to wait ...

A quick peek at the first build of my hero Ren Hoek (from the original 5 series I might add not the strange and charmless Lost Episodes).

Will aim to get it to scale with Marvin - Finally a little brother for him to play with :-D

Anyway off to have a play with some other paper bits - next stop Marvin's pistol hand.

Regards

Paul.

Ren3.jpg


Ren1.jpg


Ren6.jpg


Ren7.jpg
 
Looking good.

I like the rotating table. Is it the one from the argos catalogue that is for 14 inch TV's. Good idea. It should be ok with the weight of paper models, if it can cope with TV's.
 
bazookajo-This looks as good a build as Marvin. I would offer to do a beta/ceta build, but I'm working on 'JSC' HMS invincible at the moment. I can understand why people scan the originals and work with the scans first. Talk about a nightmare. I would recommend anyone that buys a model, scan it and work with them first to see how everything fit's. Then work with the originals.
 
What Rolls down Stairs?

Alone?
Or, in Pairs?

Carl
P.S.
It's Log! We need a model of that too!
 
Bazookajo:

Once again you have raised the bar! Nice Work. A question if you will. Can you, or did you give a tutorial on how you design your models? If this has been covered in another thread, I have not found it (I honestly did not look real hard) I ask because after the Marvin build the girlfriend wanted me to make one of her favorite characters. So I have been mulling about, learning different approaches to paper model design. I was just curious as to how you accomplished it.


Thanks :)


p.s. If there is a thread on this already, please show me the way...........................................................................
 
surfduke said:
It's Log! We need a model of that too!

Just maybe.....:wink:

paulhbell said:
bazookajo-This looks as good a build as Marvin. I would offer to do a beta/ceta build, but I'm working on 'JSC' HMS invincible at the moment.

Not to worry - will be a month or so before I finish it off, want to finish Marvin's pistol hand, and hopefully the Cylon helmet before then + it's not as complicated as Marvin (phew).

sneaker said:
Can you, or did you give a tutorial on how you design your models? If this has been covered in another thread, I have not found it (I honestly did not look real hard) I ask because after the Marvin build the girlfriend wanted me to make one of her favorite characters. So I have been mulling about, learning different approaches to paper model design. I was just curious as to how you accomplished it.

I think I did a basic rundown of what I did for Marvin, but it went a bit more smoothly this time. I'm just off to bed now, and there's tons more talented guys on this very forum for tips etc. (the webdude for one) but will run through the very basics of my current process tomorrow if I get time.

Best regards

Paul.
 
Build Process in a nutshell.

Hi Sneaker - as I said perviously, there are better guys on this forum for tips etc. but here in a nutshell is my current build process :)

Step 1 - Get the right image.
For cartoon characters you're going to want to get 'the' classic pose to work from, while keeping in kind the limitations of paper. As readers of my first post will know - for Marvin I cheated, someone had already done the work in resin, and knowing that it would stand up I just copied the pose (m'I bad).

For Ren however it meant trawling through episodes to find that indifferent/peeved look that I was after and that I couldn't find in existing store bought models (with most of the existing models, if ren was coloured blue you'd be hard pressed to recognise him).

Finally I got the body and head that I wanted and created a composite drawing - the ears were later changed to the "front" style which looked more pathetic, and proved more paper friendly:roll:

RenSketches.jpg


Step 2 - Create the 3D model.
My 3D skills are fairly limited, but usually by sheer will and determination I can scratch together something workable. The trick is to use cylinders wherever possible (this is a tip straight from the Webdude, who has a great tutorial on this - I'll have to see if he's got a link to it somewhere). Once you've got the basic structure you can then tweak it here and there with the FFD tools (Free-form Deform?), these usually have a certain number of points to play with 2x2x2, 3x3x3, and 4x4x4.

For most of the model this turned out fine, but for the head I wasn't quite sure of the best way to unfold it while doing the 3D model. For this I knew it would be a case of pusihing it throught Pepakura 'as-is' and building it in horizontal cylinders before playing with the design manually.

Ren3D.jpg


For any small fiddly parts you need to get it right in 3D, as any manual adjustments afterwards can be painful. If your as cr@ppy as me at 3D this can be a slow process, but worth the effort when it goes straight through from Pepakura to Corel without any eyeball alterations required. The hands were a case in point. For this it was a case of slicing the planes at the tip of the hands, extruding the polys to different heights, and then deleting edges, tweaking points, and generally buggering about until I was happy with it.

Hand.jpg


Step 3 - export to CorelDraw via Pepakura
Once the 3D models are done I usually export them as Wavefront objects, and import them into Pepakura (sometimes have trouble with 3DS files - not sure why). I then twiddle around with the folds/tabs and export them as wmf files, which then are imported into CorelDraw.

Once the model is in corel I change the outline colours, and colour in the shapes using a find and replace, before arranging the patterns and printing them out.

Step 4 - Peeball around for a week or three
Then it pretty much comes down to eyeball engineering - deciding the best way to get the thing to sit together. This is the most painful bit for me. At this stage I try camouflage cuts/creases as much as possible e.g. with the eyes, I have tried to build it using cuts around the components of the eyes i.e. the iris, eyelids etc. This meant getting the eye spheres and sketching on the design I wanted, and cutting out the parts manually before re-scanning. And no, much like the head - this didn't work first time :eek:ops:

As I said before the head needed a re-think to simplify it for building. This was a case of cutting up the original 'cylinder' head and then scanning in and tracing the peices in Corel. Printing it out again - rinsing and repeating as necessary :razz:

Hope this is of some use to folks, and hopefully each model will get easier with experience.

Best regards

Paul.

P.S. I think it's great that you're going to design your first model Sneaker - any clues on who it's going to be?
 
Ren will read me a bedtime story ???
Read it your self Man !!!!

How sad i'am i i own a stuffed Ren have the Comic Books for a few years ago
They signed i also have ( POWDER Toast Man ) #1 Siged

I don't think your happy enuff !! I'll teach your grammother to suck eggs !!

ok i'll stop now
 
but here in a nutshell is my current build process

WOW!

Paul, that has got to be one of the most comprehensive in a nutshell answers I have ever recieved. Thank you very much my friend. :)


as I said perviously, there are better guys on this forum for tips etc

While that may be true, I feel that your work is outstanding, that is not to take away from other designers, I have sought out guidlines for various ways to design a paper model, And I discovered that different methods apply for different genres.....does this make sense?
I would appreciate the that link to Webdude's tutorial...is it on the forums here? He has done great work as well, I used to visit his site before I knew about cardmodels.net. (of course I still visit his site :) )


P.S. I think it's great that you're going to design your first model Sneaker - any clues on who it's going to be?

Well it is no secret, I don't think anyway. But my girlfiend was so enamored by Marvin, that she asked if I could find her favorite, which needless to say I did not. She wants a Snoopy! So rather than scour the net for one I figured I would tip my hat into the ring, and give designing a go. I seem to be on the right track, as I have gathered reference material together. I dabbled with 3d studio max 2.5 way back in the day, but as you can tell by the version number that was many many moons ago......:eek:ops: A lot of catch up learning to do.

Anyhow I want to design him in roughly the same scale as Marvin, seems a good size to work with. I also plan on a woodstock, to be in scale with snoopy. I also have a few sci-fi vehicles I plan on producing, purely self indulgent, but will always be happy to share.

Thank you again for taking the time to reply, and setting me out on the path!!:)

Happy Modelling

David
 
allhallowseve said:
Ren will read me a bedtime story ???
Read it your self Man !!!!

:grin: Favourite episodes - "Stimpy's Pet", and "Ren Needs Help" - see 'em before you die.

sneaker said:
Anyhow I want to design him in roughly the same scale as Marvin, seems a good size to work with. I also plan on a woodstock, to be in scale with snoopy. I also have a few sci-fi vehicles I plan on producing, purely self indulgent, but will always be happy to share.

Nice one David - Snoopy sounds like a great choice. As for the other self-indulgent stuff, that's what it's all about - getting the model's that YOU want. The fact that you can then share them with others is a bonus:grin:

sneaker said:
Hey David,
Here's a Woodstock to get you started.

http://paper.dailyweb.hk/index.php?o...&g2_itemId=622

Very nice! - looks like you can now focus on the big guy (unless you had a different pose in mind...)

Best regards

Paul.