Just thought I should leave a footprint in this section..! 
One of my colleagues is leaving the company next week. I have made it a habit that colleagues who are leaving will get a paper model from me. Usually it is the Canon Lucky Cat (with or without sweets inside ) but this time things are a bit different. My colleague is a big Yoda fan. She loves my paper Yoda and I was thinking about giving him to her, but since there are a few imperfections (the hands and the way the head is attached to the neck) I chose to keep it till I got the time to revisit it. Since the time was insufficient to make the life-size Yoda figure by Noturno Sukhoi I was thinking about which other character would be able to replace him for the time being. If you read the title of the thread you might already know the answer: WALL-E!
I used the plans provided by Elso Lopez which come as a *.pdo:
https://www.facebook.com/ElsoCraft/...4226616357223/630270277086187/?type=1&theater
(ATTENTION: The link requires to log-in to Facebook. I'm unable to verify if the model is still there.)
It has a nice size and great texture derived from Elso's life-size and poasble Wall-E build (which you can follow on his blog; he even provided detailed plans to copy his build ). Aside from the head the body of the simple Wall-E is static. I wanted to change that. So I made some enhancements and corrections to the plans which I will explain in this thread.
The model is 30 cm tall and has 116 parts. You can see that Elso deigned this model with the eyes of an experienced papercrafter because the parts are easily identifiable (albeit sometimes difficult to locate - more on this later) and assembly is pretty straight forward. There are no tiny fiddly bits which might scare beginners away, however, the sheer amount of parts might be able to do just that. But if you just tackle one section at a time I am sure you will succeed.
The parts are not too big and not too small which is a great plus for beginners and for people with big hands . The texture is breath-takingly realistic, even though it appears a tad too red (you may adjust that before printing if you like). When I took a closer look at the movie I noticed that the CG Wall-E looks indeed more reddish in the scenes on Earth than in space where a more natural desaturated grey look prevails. Then I did the following:
1. Removed all red markings to save ink and to avoid printing them on visible areas of the parts.
2. Exported all pages as *.png at 300 dpi.
3. Edited several graphics:
page 12: mirrored text on eye lens
page 15 & 16: replaced blurred chain texture
page 17 & 18: fixed mismatched texture on drivetrain part
page 18: switched flap positions on one wheel
page 18 & 19: mirrored text on three wheels each
page 22 & 23: mirrored text on wheel
page 25 mirrored text on wheels
Then I felt it was ready to print. I didn't have the time to tinker with the colours and printed the kit as is. This too gave me the chance to fully test the abilities of my new printer, an HP Officejet 8715. I also used a new paper, 160 gsm as always, but from a different brand since the paper I used to use since about 2012 has become unavailable. It should have the same abilities though (archival and UV safe). What impressed me most was the fact that the prints came out very clean and fast (the sheets were literally shot out of the printer) and completely dry. I was unable to smudge the ink in any way (no matter how hard I rubbed on the paper the colours stayed were they were supposed to). This was a huge plus.
The white stripes were a printing error which I suppose was created by a driver issue. Subsequent prints were flawless. I fixed the issue by simply glueing the separated pieces together with a paper strip on the back. I only had to re-print two pages and used the misprints to hide imperfections on the model which showed up during assembly.
The model has 16 wheels which are all assembled the same way. I don't have to stress how much I enjoyed building them...
On the first wheels I did not glue all flaps to the rim but used two or three of them to hold the front and back plates into position.
Later I applied gue to the inside of the rim and carefully put the "lid" on it. This worked like a charm and was much less sloppy.
I marked the parts to be able to tell where they would go on the final model. To do so I wrote down the location on the white parts which would later be covered by other parts. The fit of the parts was excellent.
One of my colleagues is leaving the company next week. I have made it a habit that colleagues who are leaving will get a paper model from me. Usually it is the Canon Lucky Cat (with or without sweets inside
) but this time things are a bit different. My colleague is a big Yoda fan. She loves my paper Yoda and I was thinking about giving him to her, but since there are a few imperfections (the hands and the way the head is attached to the neck) I chose to keep it till I got the time to revisit it. Since the time was insufficient to make the life-size Yoda figure by Noturno Sukhoi I was thinking about which other character would be able to replace him for the time being. If you read the title of the thread you might already know the answer: WALL-E!I used the plans provided by Elso Lopez which come as a *.pdo:
https://www.facebook.com/ElsoCraft/...4226616357223/630270277086187/?type=1&theater
(ATTENTION: The link requires to log-in to Facebook. I'm unable to verify if the model is still there.)
It has a nice size and great texture derived from Elso's life-size and poasble Wall-E build (which you can follow on his blog; he even provided detailed plans to copy his build
). Aside from the head the body of the simple Wall-E is static. I wanted to change that. So I made some enhancements and corrections to the plans which I will explain in this thread.The model is 30 cm tall and has 116 parts. You can see that Elso deigned this model with the eyes of an experienced papercrafter because the parts are easily identifiable (albeit sometimes difficult to locate - more on this later) and assembly is pretty straight forward. There are no tiny fiddly bits which might scare beginners away, however, the sheer amount of parts might be able to do just that. But if you just tackle one section at a time I am sure you will succeed.
The parts are not too big and not too small which is a great plus for beginners and for people with big hands
. The texture is breath-takingly realistic, even though it appears a tad too red (you may adjust that before printing if you like). When I took a closer look at the movie I noticed that the CG Wall-E looks indeed more reddish in the scenes on Earth than in space where a more natural desaturated grey look prevails. Then I did the following:1. Removed all red markings to save ink and to avoid printing them on visible areas of the parts.
2. Exported all pages as *.png at 300 dpi.
3. Edited several graphics:
page 12: mirrored text on eye lens
page 15 & 16: replaced blurred chain texture
page 17 & 18: fixed mismatched texture on drivetrain part
page 18: switched flap positions on one wheel
page 18 & 19: mirrored text on three wheels each
page 22 & 23: mirrored text on wheel
page 25 mirrored text on wheels
Then I felt it was ready to print. I didn't have the time to tinker with the colours and printed the kit as is. This too gave me the chance to fully test the abilities of my new printer, an HP Officejet 8715. I also used a new paper, 160 gsm as always, but from a different brand since the paper I used to use since about 2012 has become unavailable. It should have the same abilities though (archival and UV safe). What impressed me most was the fact that the prints came out very clean and fast (the sheets were literally shot out of the printer) and completely dry. I was unable to smudge the ink in any way (no matter how hard I rubbed on the paper the colours stayed were they were supposed to). This was a huge plus.
The white stripes were a printing error which I suppose was created by a driver issue. Subsequent prints were flawless. I fixed the issue by simply glueing the separated pieces together with a paper strip on the back. I only had to re-print two pages and used the misprints to hide imperfections on the model which showed up during assembly.
The model has 16 wheels which are all assembled the same way. I don't have to stress how much I enjoyed building them...
On the first wheels I did not glue all flaps to the rim but used two or three of them to hold the front and back plates into position.
Later I applied gue to the inside of the rim and carefully put the "lid" on it. This worked like a charm and was much less sloppy.
I marked the parts to be able to tell where they would go on the final model. To do so I wrote down the location on the white parts which would later be covered by other parts. The fit of the parts was excellent.
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