Amazon Princess - Page 2

**JohnM** · #11 08-19-2018, 11:18 AM

Well I've made a start. Anyone else working on this?

As all the face appears to be on page 13, I thought I'd start there. I've only printed the one page (A3 Fit to page) but it will still be well short of life-size.
My thoughts being that if I can't do the face justice, there's no poiint in wasting ink printing off the rest.

However, I've hit the first snag already. The eyes are nowhere near the same shape, or big enough to fit into the eye sockets.

So I guess I'm gonna have to do a bit of drawing. Either bigger eyes or maybe adding some upper eyelids might do it.

**JohnM** · #12 08-20-2018, 09:17 AM

Sorted ... and a little more progress. I just filled in the eye sockets with card darkened with a pencil, then glued the kit eyes over the top.

Not looking too bad but up close there's many flaws leaping out to me. If I do continue with the full figure, I think I'll be re-doing the face at least using backing tapes instead of tabs. From a distance the seam steps aren't bad, but I think it would be much improved with flatter butt joined seams. Also, I think the headpiece would probably benefit from a double layer, to give a raised edge to it.

**Kevin WS** · #13 08-20-2018, 09:46 AM

Try your wife's face powder - dust some on and they use a spray varnish to gently fix it.

Shade alongside the headpiece with watercolours?

**romanmodels** · #14 08-20-2018, 03:18 PM

looking good johnny

**JohnM** · #15 08-23-2018, 08:43 AM

Ummm ? What shall I say? I wanted to say that the nose was hard, but I got there, so I will adjust that to challenging.

The two extra bits go inside the nostrils ... Still figuring the best way to attach them cleanly. The original tabs are not thought out at all.

I'm glad I opted to double size this, but I'm still not too happy with the seams. They show up way too much on skin colour, and it's impossible to keep clean. If I do decide to build the whole figure, I will definitely be re-doing the face using taped butt joins. In fact to be honest, I've already printed out another page, but I'll stick with this one a bit longer for the practice.

**Kevin WS** · #16 08-23-2018, 11:37 AM

Goog progress - be happy!

**Revell-Fan** · #17 08-23-2018, 11:56 AM

It looks good! Keep it coming.

**JohnGay** · #18 08-23-2018, 01:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnM

Ummm ? What shall I say? I wanted to say that the nose was hard, but I got there, so I will adjust that to challenging.

The two extra bits go inside the nostrils ... Still figuring the best way to attach them cleanly. The original tabs are not thought out at all.

Pepakura often gets confused on small tabs in tight corners. Especially with an excessive number of polygons in close proximity. That's why it pays to carefully check your tabs and try a few builds first.

Another trick I've learned from pepakura builds:
Print a second copy on plain paper and use the tabs from that on the back of you cardstock print to assist with butt-jointing your pieces.
I did this several times with a Deadpool lifesized head print that came out pretty good.

Cheers,

John Gay

**JohnM** · #19 08-23-2018, 03:40 PM

I normally would go even further than just using a paper copy for tabs John G. I usually print off and build a parallel model, but that one is white with no textures, and all the fold lines showing prominently. I build that one with all the creases and folds sharp so that I can see exactly how it was designed to go together ... then repeat each action on the textured one which has no lines or tabs and where ever plausible I don't fold anyway. This leads to much more realistic curved surfaces on the finished model.

However, with this one, all I am doing is experimenting to see if my damaged fingers can do justice to the face before deciding whether to go for the complete model. If I can't get what I want (or close to it) I will abort. I probably haven't done myself any favour by starting with a No Lines .pdf print. This means I am having to experiment for fit quite a bit before comitting to glue, but I am getting there slowly.

I'm pleased enough with the results so far that I have already printed another no lines face sheet do do it again properly, but I'm going to finish this rough one off first, to see how many more areas will prove difficult.

My primary difficulty is that I have no sense of touch in my fingers. Unless I'm looking at them I cannot locate or hold any of the tools properly, and tend to drop things a lot. So I also have great difficulty manipulating and smoothing the card parts and seams. There are way too many part built models laying around here that I've had to abandon because the small parts defeated me. Hence the reason I double sized this already large model. So far it's working, but I haven't dared look at her fingers yet. She could well end up as just a head ... but it is well designed and it should be a very attractive head.

But if it all works out, and I get to build the complete figure ... Finishing off Jessica is definitely next on the list.

**JohnM** · #20 08-26-2018, 10:42 AM

Well that's all of page 13 completed ...

It is a nice, well sculpted face that looks pretty good in zoomed and flashed soft focus (Which is how I often make my models look better than they really are), but if I hard focus from a distance in natural light and crop, you can see those seams that are bugging me.

So my opinion is that yes it is a model worth me building ... so stay tuned ... but first that face has to be re-built using butt and tape joins.

Unfortunately the PDO and PDF are both set with no fold lines showing, and the PDO is password locked, so I cannot open it in Pep.Designer to adjust the settings in order to make a lined non-textured set for my usual experimental parallel built. Just have to continue judging the curves and joins from the 3D view I guess.