December: Coming Soon...Chrono Cross models

Hi team,
   I believe that Chrono Cross has been released on the playstation network, so if you haven't already done so, go out and purchase this great game.  Hopefully this'll send a message the the people at square that people are demanding another addition to the series.  I waited over a decade to play this great game.  Anyway in the spirit of this great game, I plan on building some papercrafts from the game in the next coming weeks.  This is to carry off where Kaizo left off.  However I'll have to see about being able to include stands with them.  For some of the models it is feasible, because their legs are close together, however some of the models appear that it won't work.

So I'll start with Lynx in his battle ready pose and Irenes.  I'm going to try the no-fold approach for these models.  They appear to be low-poly enough that it can be done, but we'll see.  Starting off these models are a little bit bigger scale, but I'll try and reduce the scale to match the scale that Kaizo set up in the first place (but we'll see because of productivity limitations)  I would love to do the Time Devourer, yet another model that Kaizo mentioned but never did, however the and issue with transparency will be difficult.  I'm thinking of the final pose for it, which would ideally make it a hanging model, but I think I'll need to make a stand for it (I'll need to go back and make a stand for Kefka, since when I move may not be able to hang him.).

Garland's Helmet and my one year anniversary!!!

I think I'll start unfolding a series of wearables for the cosplayers out there.  I'm not test building these so I'll need some feedback from people who decide to make them.  This helmet and two others are from Kaizo, so they follow the same scale as his head...

Garland's Helm

As far as other updates go, I've passed one big hurdle and venturing on to face many more.  So my papercraft productivity will continue at the pace that it has been going at for this past half year.  However in this past 12 months I have enjoyed sharing some of my favorite FF characters with you.  Six characters and two wearables.  I've spent many pointless hours posing models over and over again, only to realize that those models are enormous projects that would take a long time. Unfortunately my limited attention span takes over and I lose interest in working with the model.  I've been wanting to do ff12 models for so long, but they take so long to work with just to end up with a model that doesn't have bones.  Scratch posing can be a pain.  I have several dissidia models which I've been posing and have started to lay out, but there is probably going to be some span of time before I get around to them.  I've had AaronVFT's Tidus model half build on my shelf for a year, and ACE's Cloud model printed out but just collecting dust.  Ive posed and unfolded Gabranth for another model with an "iconic" pose.  I've been waiting to print him out, but when your schedule is incredibly busy, there seems like little point in printing out yet another model.  I'm working on posing another Gilgamesh model, but it'll take some time, I'm debating which model to work on next.  I'd really like to get a Chrono Cross model out there, but we'll see how things go.

Only time will tell how much more I produce in the upcoming year....

Horns Forward Helm

Halloween is just around the corner....and this has been sitting in my folder for a while, I don't think I'm going to redo this model, but here is Kaizo's Horn Forwards Helm.

Horns forward helm

Dark Kain at last....

Alright everybody,  Dark Kain is finished, it'll be a long while before instructions are typed up and released.  I didn't take as many pictures as I should for this build, but I figured I'd share what I have right now.  For the time being this is a showcase model.  As I hinted at before, this will be my last model post for a long time...

update from 11/24/2011:  Here is the file; I finally created the instructions!!!

A long while yet...

So you might be wondering why there haven't been as many sporadic updates for the past couple months?

"What's with this guy? He even posts about small progress reports??" you might be wondering...

Well to answer that question I've been busy.  I'm loaded with academic work...  I don't really have time for papercrafting at this point.  I've been going through the process preparing several projects, but I can't say when they'll get finished.  Working with the FF12 data has been fairly discouraging...I've spent hours and hours of flipping normals and scratch posing (you can probably see the polygon's normal in the gum area below), and I have yet to even get the model into sketchup for cleaning...   I have a couple pages left on the Dark Kain model, Gabranth will be printed eventually, and then I'll try to get the Cuchulainn model out, but at the current rate I'm working at Gabranth will probably be months down the line....

The Bad Good Guys

I love character development, characters who are misunderstood, and interesting characters in general.  So far my papercraft adventure has allowed me to build some of the great characters from Final Fantasy who fit the above mentioned criteria.

I'm on break for the next 10 days, of which I am not currently with the Dark Kain, model so I cannot show any pictures of the progress on him thus far (All I have left are the arms, head, and lance...)

However I will be working on the layout to two models who were bad-good guys, but made the switch at some point in the story.

For those of you checking the "Projects in Queue" this is nothing new, but anyway I felt this was deserving of a post. ------->I'm in the process of laying out Gabranth in his Amano art pose...

I took some liberties and made his cape blow to the side so it would be a little more of an interesting pose (this makes it similar to the pose of him by square, however they have his feet pointing downward and I didn't think that was true to the scene in the game...)  The other model I'm still working with and I'll let you know more as things arise, but there is a hint somewhere on the site, and technically this person was not a bad-good "guy"....

By the way have you seen Crisis Craft's Vaan model?  Talk about a great pose!!! I love it, there is so much action in just a paper statue.

Kefka, God of Magic

Kefka, God of Magic.

I said I'd get him done this week, and here we are on Sunday morning and I present to you the Kefka Package.
Please mind the "Readme" file as well as the instructions for my advice on how to build this model.  I really enjoyed making a hanging model.  It definitely saves shelf space and looks cool rotating whenever the fan blows past it.

Fan Builds!!!

I'd like to acknowledge the works of (1) Peter and his Gilgamesh Model:

As well as the work of (2) Stray Snake for his Kain Model

Great Job guys!!!
If anybody else has built models send them to me and I'll post them.  I should probably start a separate page soon enough...

Where did all my time go?!?! A hyperlink filled update...

So there is about 3 weeks left of summer for me, and I have yet to finish as much as I sought out to...
Kefka is completed and hanging from my ceiling (I'll post pictures and instructions this week).  Dark Kain is half way built.  I've added some models to my queue...

So Kaizo covered the Dissidia models of Cecil, Ace is covering the Nintendo DS remakes of Cecil, and I would like to do the SNES versions of Cecil.

But before I can get to those models I need to help out cleaning up Golbez from the After Years for AaronVFT. Aaron has been a great help to me in the past.  The pose is great and will look awesome once he completes it, but we need to make sure there is a structural support system in place to hold up the cape.  We'll need to get help from an excellent papercrafter with engineering skills...can you guys think of anyone who matches this description?

But maybe I will be sticking to schedule.  Hopefully I'll be able to put out the Gilgamesh model in a couple of months.  The larger models are pretty hard to find a place to put, whereas the smaller models will be easy to place on my existing shelf.   I've been working on a larger project that I mentioned in the earlier post, this has taken a me a lot of time to deal with, and a long time to come, it is incredibly high poly count, and has polygons nested within the existing.  So far I've cleared 1 of the major road blocks, but there are some others that would take a long time to overcome.  So far this paragraph doesn't have a link in it.  But in the spirit of Ace's hidden sword download link, I've hidden the link to where my secret long-term project, somewhere on this page...  I'll release more information about this project as it becomes more relevant, but at this point it was just me overcoming some boundaries.  Hopefully someday I'll be able to do the FF12 Gilgamesh, if you couldn't tell by my blog thus far, I have a fascination with multi-armed entities...

UPDATES: Kefka God of Magic, Dark Kain, and progress

After a long while, I've pretty much got Kefka finished.

 I just need to touch up the wings, attach the earrings, and come up with a way to suspend the model.  At some point I might come up with a stand.  But suspending the model is my first priority, a stand would just mean that it would take up more shelf space, and this model is for those who have limited shelf space.  The instructions will be out in due time...

I'll be able to move on to Dark Kain, Cecil, and another Gilgamesh.

I'm also working on another project which is looking pretty difficult at the moment.  Here is a list of the issues that I'm facing with this project which make things complicated:
1.) Nested meshes/polygons  (model has approximately 10,000 polygons!!!)
2.) Intersecting polygons
3.) Posing 100+ bones
4.) Having to decide a feasible pose
5.) Limited video memory on my desktop PC

OH AND BY THE WAY, IF YOU HAVEN"T STOPPED BY ALREADY GO CHECK OUT MARQUITECH's MODEL!!!!

In other news I think I've come up with enough information for working with FF8 models, and I'm getting closer to FF9 models...

In between working and relaxing, I've been dragging my feet with papercraft (believe it or not, sometimes I feel too tired to cut paper)  I started to play Chrono Cross so between this, that, and the other, I'll be coming up with updates this summer

Coming soon...

Great Thanks to Aaron

FF4 was my first Final Fantasy, I remember being always seeing the cartridge at my neighbors house and him telling me he could get me really far into the game and then he'd get to the Antlion's Den and then get stuck.  I'd play this game for hours and hours on my dad's old TV, something was slightly wrong with the settings on the TV so I could see the secret passages.  Of course I'm biased towards it since it was my first, it'll be nice to add this DK version of Cecil to my collection

  

In other news, I've only got the head of Kefka left and then he should be easy to release, however, I've been working a lot recently and have had very little personal time to work on Kefka and Kain.  In the little time I have, I'm playing through Chrono Cross.  Which is a great relief, its been too long since I've had the chance to   play an RPG.

Updates: Dark Kain Template

Slow but steady wins the race right?  I've run short of time, so my projects are going slow, but hopefully I'll finish Kefka this weekend. Keep your fingers crossed.  But in the meantime I finally finished the template for Dark Kain, I've been slowly building him little by little so expect him soon.

Updates: Multi-armed and multi-tasking

6/1/2011 Update

I've repositioned the arms to be closer to the reference picture, it was laborious, but I think I'm getting a little closer.  The hard part is getting the two right hands aligned to hold onto the sword.

older version 

 This is not in any way an homage to Captain Morgan :o)

I started messing with the pose I have for Gilgamesh's EX mode, Right now I'm posing him with the default weapons, which in my opinion are a bit bright for the general color scheme of this model.  I am considering pulling different weapons from the other characters. (mythgraven blade, tournesol, durandal, and great axe, and the masamune)  Most of those are from the Vaan model.  But these weapons are not as bright as the default weapons.  I figured this way, once I build the multi armed sprite version of gilgamesh the two models won't be holding exactly the same weapons.  I still need to re-position the arms so that the weapons don't end up hitting each other. and figure out how to design his base. (in the mean time imagine a rock underneath his foot. But I figure that I'd see if anybody had any opinions on the matter.

I started Dark Kain, I'm pacing myself with Kefka.

For some reason when models require me building small parts (fingers, faces, etc.) I lose my motivation, this is probably why I like big models.  Either way, I've shifted gears to Dark Kain.

Updates: Kefka God of Magic, and Gilgamesh

I've run into some complications with Kefka, I went ahead and built the wings out of 65 lb paper, however that was too heavy when I was attaching parts of the demon wings and I had to remove one of his wings and am going to have to rebuild that part.  FYI when you build this model build the wings out of paper.  I'll reference it in the instructions just in case.  The wings attach to the body in such a narrow manner that it's hard for the weight of the wings not to rip the support.

Here are what I plan to do for Gilgamesh models.  At least the true form and the masters creatures one, the purplish Gilgamesh I based off of Gilgamesh from FF12, however i figured it would fit since its a fairly defensive pose and would be representative of a scared person travelling the void.  There are still some posing issues with the toes of the model to make him stand flat, but this is just to give you an idea.  And of course the Reddish Gilgamesh is going to have some sort of stand underneath him to support his left foot.  In all the EX model's of Gilgamesh I plan on having different weapons in all of his hands.  These will probably be the only models I do after Kefka for the year.  My schedule is fairly busy. (Amano's Gilgamesh is almost ready for release...) so I'm going to play it safe and just try to work on the Gilgamesh models.

Updates: Kefka God of Magic, Multi-Armed Gilgamesh, and Dark Kain

I'm working on Gilgamesh's instructions at the moment, but in the meantime I spoke with Zinarei, and he said he didn't mind if I took over Kefka God of magic.  Anyone interested, I believe Zinarei/Kaizo/Aaron have posed him in the "Did I get him?" position as mentioned in the Dissidia process video post.

I went with the iconic Kefka God of Magic pose

 

Of course I took some small liberties due to the size of the gown material that was available. I didn't tip his leg as much, but I still tried to maintain the same Kefka-esque-ness.  One thing I should point out that I have done and will continue to do with the models that I pose is that I would like them to look realistic in terms of their balance.  Center of gravity is important, as well as the plausibility of limb placement/joint rotation.  Of course when you're dealing with models that don't have restrictions on movement, and they have appendages/ parts of clothes that interfere with the model building process, it is always necessary to find some middle ground.  I was looking at doing a model of the DS version of Cecil's Dark Knight, however the pose I was looking at doing did not seem practical for a battle stance, nor was it an iconic pose so I decided to leave it alone for the time being.  I've got these models which are more immediate on my plate.

I've also handed over the FF12 version of Gilgamesh to ACE.  He's been working on cleaning up the model, so hopefully in the future the community will have another Gilgamesh model.  Speaking of Gilgamesh Models, I've started to work on the Ex-mode of gilgamesh.  A couple posts ago, I posted my progress on the Ex-mode that is based on the FFV sprite, however I have been unable to settle on the exact pose.  The model is different than the sprite, the "main arms" of the model are a lot larger than expected and the secondary arms do not bend at all, they are pretty much fixed, I will return to it eventually.  Square-Enix has a picture of that particular EX mode holding all of the weapons, however given that the model would already be 700 mms tall, and the spear would be a lot taller, and his holding of weapons would make shelf space ridiculously limited.

So for the Alternate EX-mode I'll be going for the following pose

 Which is based on the Masters Creatures pose of him, but as I mentioned before there will be some liberties taken because of the inability to move some of the joints in the alternate arms.  This can be remedied by converting to editable mesh/poly as Ace taught me, however once I can only do that once I'm positive on the pose at all other joints. (For some reason I can't figure out how to go back to bones from an editable mesh/poly model)

I could have gone with this pose that SQENIX already provided, and maybe I will.  I plan on doing the sprite based models eventually.  Of course I plan on doing all of the Gilgamesh models eventually, currently I just wanted to try my hand at Kefka, and because of people's concern with shelf space, I thought it'd be appropriate to try my hand at a hanging model (like the Highwind or Fahrenheit), and that is why I will be putting out Kefka.

In addition to Gilgamesh I've been working on cleaning up Dark Kain, I based his pose on another Amano pose, which incidentally is the pose that they have Kain in anyway, however I widened his stance, and corrected some of joints so that there weren't any "awkward" intersecting polygons with his chest.

So these are the next three models that I'm working with.  As usual I'll keep you posted along the way...

Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh

Kain Highwind

 

 Kain Highwind 

I finally got Kain completed, he doesn't come with an alternate costume in this batch.  I'm working on his other models so be expecting those soon...

Updates

Hey Team,

    My personal life has taken a turn towards the complicated, in addition to that I've been busy with my research, and have conferences to attend throughout the year, which is requiring a lot of my time and effort at this point.  I'm working on instructions for Kain, and I'm working on Gilgamesh.  I'm aware of how simple instructions are to make, but it just takes a good bit of time for me to rework how I built the model. I don't really know what else to say other than "If you love someone one, and you don't have the voice to make them hear it, remember that your actions are louder than words, and make sure you do the right thing before it's too late."

After Kain...

 

Still working on Kain.  Getting him to stand is creating a problem right now.  Due to builder problems the balance is off.  Most likely those that build him will experience some slight amount of variation in the pose.  The pose was never tested to be balanced in the first place, I'm not sure how I would do that using the software that I have available...

But I'll come up with something either super glue, or using a dowel through the base of the foot.

As you can see from the picture above, I've unfolded the next project.  I changed his stance the tiniest amount.  I'm thinking of doing the sprite version also, and to be more true to the sprite version I would have him holding his naginata, however in this version I've stuck with a similar "battle-ready pose"

And sometime after that my big project will be to finish the FF8 Gilgamesh...  This will probably be a huge learning experience for me, most notably the cape is going to be a problem as will merging the separate components together.  But here is what I've got so far...

Here is the appropriate reference picture.  I'll have to make up a couple of things in sketchup(Cape, fake right arm posts) but it shouldn't be a problem.  In the end I'm sure it'll all have been well worth it.  I'm going to label this as an extended project...

In addition to the models above, I'll be working on the following...

Update...

MARCH 9TH: The stand

Basically I took some mountain textures and created the stand to accommodate the shape of the bottom of Kain's foot.  This way Kain is standing on a rock like structure.  Ace brought up a good idea of having him standing on a pillar like in the DS intro.  If I do Dark Kain then I'll will definitely consider that pose

This pose looks a lot easier than the DS pose considered in prior posts.


Alright I finished up Kain today...well Kain without his lance or a way for him to stand alone.  I'll work on a stand and his lance as I get the chance.

I'll get some better pictures during the day when I can release the whole model instructions and everything.  I'll warn you guys now that his helmet was very difficult for me to work with.  I don't think I have developed skilled hands yet.  Exdeath and Golbez were nice to work with because for the most part they were comprised of large parts.  However if you've seen how Kain's helmet is designed you'll get it.  But if(wait for the when..) my instructions aren't clear enough, don't sweat it just use some logic for how you can get away with it the best, because some of these parts are so thin/small that the tabs are so large they are twice as wide as the textured piece itself.
This is my 6th Dissidia:FF completed papercraft, 3rd "small" model (I'm considering Garland, Exdeath, and Golbez as large models) these complex models under 600mm really accentuate my craftsmanship or lack thereof.  But I'm getting better.

I've started on Gilgamesh, and as usual I'll keep you guys posted on the big updates.  In the meantime check out Ace, Aaron, or Namotasa's page for some great papercrafts.  Or maybe if you're feeling up for it you can go to the forum and contribute.

Enough Expository Banter...

Coming Soon...600mm tall...