Randall Villegas Week 13: Pepakura

Concept: I went through probably 20 or so concepts before I reached something that I liked enough that fit the project requirements. I saw a lot of heads used for pepakura projects so I decided to run with that theme some. Initially, a ram head really stuck out to me but, after talking about it with Amanda and some classmates, I adjusted the horns and changed the model in to an impala. I really liked the idea of a trophy pieces so I played with the idea of a few headboards and reached my starting point for my pepakura.

Modeling: I did all of my modeling in maya. I started by creating the eye using the Create Polygon Tool. I then Extrude from the eye to create forms of the cheek and nose area. I then went through and added a lot of details to the snout via the Edge Loop and Multi-Cut Tool. I pushed the vertices around to create a defined snout area and mouth. Once the facial area was finished, I extruded from the mouth downwards to start creating the neck area of the model. Using the Append Polygon Tool and multi cut tool I attached the bottom of the neck to the rest of the face and adjusted the edges some to wrap properly like a neck does.

For the cranial part of the head, I extruded back from the eye and did a lot of multi cutting to shape of the rest of the head. Then i extruded from the back of the head to create the back of the neck and merged the vertices from the edge of that face and that of the face on the side neck to close up the model. I then mirrored the geometry to create the other half and that gave me everything but the horns.

For the horns, I created a cylinder with a few subdivisions and used the Twist Deform Tool to create the general form I wanted. To give the horns a little more personality, I used soft select in conjunction with the Scale and Move Tool to shape the horns and give them a little bend. After I got the horn to a working position, I deleted some faces on top of the head to fit the horn in and appended the polygons from the horn to the head. I deleted the old face and mirrored it once more to have my full head.

Material: For the render, I wanted it to keep the essence of the cardboard I was going to use for the project with a contrast of the walnut board. I really like how the head pops out of the board with the harsh color and value change. For the physical model, I used the board available in the Digital Fab lab and painted the individual pieces to add points of interest and help cover some of my problem areas.

Physical Assembly: Pepakura was something I definitely should have played with before jumping into the final project, My model was way to complex with fine components that did not translate well at the size I worked at. It was really a challenge to get anything working out of them. I also did not make my flaps correctly and spent a lot of time getting the flaps to work in a method that was workable. The mouth was also way to complicated and the little parts of it had to be kind of jerry-rigged into position. 

The horns did not twist properly due to material thickness and a general issue with how they were twisted inside of Maya I had to do the horns by glue a flap on each section of the horn and slowly twisting it to get it working. At times I would have to cut the flaps in a way to give some flex room to bend in the spiral I created. \

Once I got something working from the head, I went to paint it to give a little life to the piece. I painted the head brown with the ears having a tan accent. The horns were painted a matte black and once it all dried I went to assembly of the pieces. I glue the pieces together with loctite and finished the Pepakura. Unfortunately, the crazy amount of torque from the horns and poor Pepakura planning caused the horns to be more asymmetrical than I would have liked.. I didn't get around to making my Trohpy board unfortunately but maybe it is something I will return to at a later date.