Sometimes you see something and just get inspired. That’s how I felt about the series BNA and wanted to make a movable figure. It was also a good chance to test a couple things— first, if I could make some sturdier joints, and second, print a flexible material similar to the PVC used for hair or clothing on production figures.
First sketch, looks-like model, and the final version with functional articulation.
These are the joints without the figure. The elbows and knees were custom sizes, so this was really a test to see if they would hold up with some new designs and new materials I haven’t used before. The rest were from a store bought set that I measured carefully and digitally recreated.
The first test print. Most pieces are fused so I think the print was just five pieces— the head, left and right arms, the upper torso, and the legs and hips all together. Some overall proportions were was adjusted after seeing this first version.
The test of the soft material. The company RESIONE makes a few resins that are of particular interest to action figure fans, especially the pliable F69 resin (shown in black).
After lots of tests, I ended up with three varieties— one with a lot of flex for the clothing, one with a little flex for the joints, and one with low flex (but highest detail) for the main body parts.
Now on to painting.
Primer
After airbrushing. I’ve skipped over some steps of masking and painting and masking again which can be seen a little here. The faces for example I first painted the eyes white, then masked and did the raccoon mask in brown, then masked for the final skin tone.
The main palette.
One thing that made this project easier than past ones was that I tried to have almost every piece be held by some sort of shim or helper part, so the clamps weren’t directly squeezing and deforming the actual piece itself.
Hand painting the eyes. They could probably be darker but I still like how they turned out.
White -> Blue -> Pink -> Yellow
I realized late that I had meant to use the store-bought hip joints, which are about 13 mm or 17 mm wide respectively. As seen here though, either by accident or by stubbornness I designed it to be instead at a medium size of about 15 mm wide. Fortunately it still works!
The tail part went surprisingly well. I didn’t want to mask of the irregular fur pattern on such a round shape so I tried splitting it in two pieces to paint separately. This had the additional benefit that it could be hollow and the inside could be easily cleaned too.
And that’s it! Just topcoating and assembly left.
