Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Swivel me timbers!

Like everything LEGO, minifigs can be taken apart into separate pieces, and when put together, all these parts can move separately so you can put your minifig into different positions.

To be able to move and take apart all the pieces of my papercraft Knoest the same way, the paper parts will have pins too, like the LEGO parts.

When you build a paper model in real life though, the measurements aren't as exact as in the 3D model of course, so it's important to make the pins a little bit smaller than the holes themselves.

That way, there's some room for imperfections during the build, but the holes shouldn't be too big either of course, because the friction of the pins will have to keep the parts together. ;o)

Stay tuned!

2 comments:

  1. In relation to the holes is necessary to consider two things, the papercraft model size and thickness of the paper. At my minifig papercraft model, I had to make some adjustments when I put it together so that the pieces fit as accurate as possible. Neither too loose nor too tight, and as evenly as possible, so that both hands have the same mobility as the shoulders, neck, hips, legs and even the helmet.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, exactly; if the holes are too small, the pins won't fit, and if it's too large, there won't be enough friction to hold them in place.

    But I've found that trying to work *that* accurately in the 3D model (even with the 200 gsm paper that I always use, which is about 2.5 times as thick as regular printer paper, the thickness is still only 0.2 millimeters... ;o) takes much more time than it's worth...

    Because in the end, after so many models, I won't cut and glue within a margin of just 0.2 mm all the time! Maybe that's why you still had to make adjustments when putting it together, even if you took the paper thickness into account.

    During the test build I will be able to test if the holes are big enough for the pins, and even then there's still some margin; when I will build it again for the final version, it might fit better or less better again than on the first build... ;o)

    But luckily, paper is a very easy material to work with, and even if you can't build with perfect accuracy, you can "work" with the paper a bit so it will still fit, with more than enough margin of error, as long as it's not *too* crazy of course... ;o)

    ReplyDelete