My body came out...square... help!

[Snark Blarmsten]

Well, I'm on to the body. I was doing the method in the foam book where you string patterns together (like a paper chain of shapes) then glue them together. I did 4 panels (and maybe that is my problem) and it came out pretty much square!

So, my question is - is it simply a matter of making thinner shapes and using 5 shapes instead of 4 to get a round body? Or, is there a better method than that for getting a foam body. I don't want the basic tube, I want the more rounded look, especially since I am using fur.

Any help is appreciated!

Tom

 

[Melonpool]

It's all about the darts.

All you have to do is cut away triangles from the two open ends and glue them back together. Maybe 2 inch at the base up to a 2 1/2 inch point for each triangle. I'd do one at each seam, glue it together and see what it looks like. It should suck the butt in to make it less like a cube. Also, you can vary the shape and size of the darts to tape the body.

I'd experiment on some scrap foam, so you kind of have an idea what each dart will do.

Steve

 

[Phantom]

You can also cut the edges of the top and bottom at an angle then glue in a hoop of aquarium tubing. That helps round things out.

 

[Phantom]

What's the deal with the double posting...that's twice today.

 

[ravagefrackle]

might be helpful to find a stuffed animal that has a body shape u like, rip it opne, and stud the pattern, then enlarge it to suit your project

 

[Buck-Beaver]

One way of doing round bodies is the wedge method. It's covered in detail if you search the forum for past threads about it, but basically it's cutting 6-8 wedges (imagine a round object like an orange cut in to pieces). To make a perfectly round ball cut 8 wedges exactly the same size that are four times as long as they are wide (4:1 ratio) and glue them together. By varying the shape of the wedge and the number of wedges you can create different round shapes. This is how I make a lot of my puppet heads and bodies.

 

[Snark Blarmsten]

Thanks for the good tips guys. Maybe I'll try and dart and fix the one I have although I don't know...it's really square! LOL

Tom

 

[wes]

I had a Geometry teacher help me. draw a shape like this: ()
Think Football I made four Elipes out of foam and glued together.

Hope this helps!!

 

[Snark Blarmsten]

That makes sense too - it's kind of what I did actually. It was wider on the bottom, but still came out fairly square. This time I will do a paper prototype first. I searched around for wedge and body but found no wedge method of making a body... some links to your old Bear town site Buck, but nothing seemingly current (I seem to run into that a LOT LOL).

Tom

 

[Iokitek]

The mistake I made the first time was to make the wedges like this <> instead of like this () Don't know if you can see what I mean. But it also came out square then wich was very logical looking back on it.