Earth-chan (Earth chibi) build papercraft
Time for another one of my designs put to the test and assembled by me. And what else could it be than one of my fav chibis I made, my take on the popular “Earth-chan”.
Yes, this papercraft is FREE to download on my page, so you can scroll down for the download link or you can read this part and maybe find some tips on how to assemble her and make your life easy that way XD
The craft is about 20cm tall, so she is a comfortable height to make parts easy, even if some of them are smaller. I started, as always, with assembling her head, from top to neck part. But actually, this time I closed the head on the top part, since it’s easier this way AND the top part will not be visible at the end, because you glue the hair piece on that.
When I made the head, I also made the hair part. Now I noticed that the hair part when build separately is quite wide and since you don’t actually glue it on any flaps and only on the top of the head, it has no reference points of how to put it in the right form. So what I did is that I put the assembled hair part between 2 glasses and gently pressed then together, to make the hair piece slimmer and more head-shaped. This way, the face and the hair at the end when glued together, will look nice and slimming and add to the chibi charm of the papercraft, like it is shown in the reference pictures of the template. If you don’t let the hair squish you might not get the ideal shape of the hair to fit perfectly on the head, but you can also leave this part out if you are happy with how it looks. Depends on what you want it to look like really, so just sharing my experience with it.
Now that we have the head and hair, I made the fiddliest part of the assembly, which are the fingers and hands. She has 1 finger on each hand and a joined palm, so those might be a bit fiddly to make, but not super hard really. If you made humanoid crafts before, you’ll build it in no time. After the hands come the arms and then the whole torso part + the 2-sided skirt.
Note: At this stage you will want to glue the “collar” part of the school uniform into the neck, if you want to glue it with self-made flaps inside the neck. If not, you can glue this part at the very end of the assembly, if you are okay with it being a bit loose around the neck.
When you have the upper part of the body + skirt, and the head, you glue that together in the neck part with the flaps and make it nice and sturdy (you can additionally fill out the neck with paper rolls or reinforce it with tape, just to be on the safe side) so the rather small neck won’t reform because of the head weight. I didn’t do it myself, since I found it rather sturdy and I am always careful when assembling small parts together, but you never know ;)
All that is left now is to make the separate leg part. I did that by assembling the shoes first and building it part by part till the pants, since at the top of the pants is open and you can help yourself with the open hole like that better than you would do from top to bottom.
Now simply put glue on the flaps of the pants and adjust and glue it on the upper body and head part that you did earlier. All that is left is to glue the hair on the head (and glue the collar on the actual model to fit if you already didn’t), and there you go, chibi Earth-chan is finished.
As you can see she also has some add-on posters that you can choose from for her to hold in her hands. Mine actually worked without me having to glue in inside her hands, but you can also glue it on if you wish. Another tip to make the hands so close together is again the tip with the 2 glasses. Simply put the body part with her hands between 2 glasses and let it bend together a bit for a few hours, and the arms are as close as you want them to be, without deforming the arms in any way. Just be careful on how close you put the glasses together.
There you go, your own customizable Earth-chan that you can make with 4 different expressions for yourself. If you want to give it a go, here is the template that you can download for FREE here:
https://www.deviantart.com/antyyy/art/Earth-chan-Earth-chibi-FREE-papercraft-download-826477761
I hope you like it, share some links and happy crafting~
***This is a FREE papercraft that you can download either with the download icon (arrow down) at the bottom of the picture, with the provided external download link, or on my Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/antyyyspapercrafts.
If you assemble any of them, please share the finished papercraft pictures in a post, a shared link, a mention (or link) to my page, or send pictures to me, so I can post them on my page. I am always happy to see anybody assembling my art :)***
