LEGO minifigs put their pants on two legs at a time

The basic shape of a LEGO minifig's torso is very simple, with 4 "ribs" inside which fit around the pins of the hips, a hole on each side to connect the arms, and a simple cylinder on top as the neck.

Now that I've come this far, I think before I start working on the rest, I will make the texture for Knoest's shirt first; it'll be a nice break from SketchUp. ;o)

Stay tuned!

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!

Knoest's other leg (yes, the wooden one)

For pretty much any other LEGO minifig, I could have just mirrored one leg in Photoshop when making the final templates, but not for Kapitein Knoest: he also has a wooden leg. ;o)

The wooden leg has a lot of round parts, and normally, if you were just making a 3D model, you could just trace half the outline and then instead of extruding it, rotate it along the vertical axle (SketchUp has the "Follow me" tool for this) and you would have a perfect round, wooden leg.

But this way, it would just be a hollow shell, and if you look closely at the wooden leg, I think you can see how it makes much more sense to break it up in seperate parts, that are stacked on top of each other.

So even at this early stage, you already have to imagine how you will build the final paper model, because the 3D parts can't be changed anymore of course after unfolding them in a much later stage...! ;o)

Stay tuned!