28mm Vocaloid miniatures?

[CaptainShrike]

Hello everyone. I posted this over on Vocaloid Otaku a couple of weeks ago, but had no response. I'm hoping I'll get some here.

Simply put, I want some Vocaloid miniatures. For those you who don't know what a Vocaloid is, search it in Youtube or Go Google It (those of you who do know what I'm on about will see what I did there ). Now obviously there aren't any official ones (I've done some research), and can't find any models that fit the bill neatly. The closest I've got so far is Soda Pop Miniature's Suicide Queen who'll be painted up as GUMI, but it's not something I could show to a fellow Vocaloid fan and they'd recognise in a heartbeat. The models I want to do must be in their original costumes, not PV-specific ones like Meltdown or Matryoshka - not right away, at least.

I haven't found any generic minis I'm happy with, can anyone help me out here? If I must get desperate then I'll see about green-stuffing details onto base anime models (I'd still need to these pointed out to me), but I've had no experience with either type of green stuff (solid or liquid), and so won't consider doing whole figures from scratch.

To be honest, the completed products may not even see life off of a display shelf, other than the aforementioned SQ example which may be used in an RPG, like Shadowrun.

So, can anyone help? I have no preference on material.

[Verm1s]

For those you who don't know what a Vocaloid is, search it in Youtube or Go Google It

Do I need to turn safe search off, or on?

[CaptainShrike]

It's not explicit, if that's what you mean. You don't necessarily need to turn off safesearch. It is one of those areas that seems to be VERY popular for being made so though...

It's a synthesised singing program, sort of a midi synthesiser meets microsoft sam, but the voices available have anime-based avatars.

[commissarbob]

My suggestion here is look into people who can do 3d printing, there are a variety of companies that do 3d printing. What you want to find is one that can do a very fine resolution. You can convert the 3d files yourself to be able to be 3d printed if you have access to software, though I am sure there are forums out there more specifically related to anime, pepekura, etc. that would have users happy to do that step for you if you do not have the software or know how.

[catwell]

Commissarbob' s right 3d printing would work. Though of course I would say that as I have a vested interest being the owner of a 3d printing miniature shop .

The key factors if your going to go 3dp is what machine to use, personally for 28 mm mini's I use Shapeway's fine ultra detail printer, works pretty well. I'd suggest making it as one solid piece as at 28mm scale hollowing out is pointless. (the first 28mm model i made i made as a kit with separate pieces for limbs, head etc and it was just too small and fiddly to construct). The other factor is can you 3d model, if not you'd have to find someone to model Vocaloid for you, and then theres copyright issues. So someone modelling her would have to make it a one off (which means it would be expensive) or do something similar looking to her, or simply not advertise it as her.

If your looking for something off the shelf, kingdom death have some anime esq figures as do Soda pop (which you already know about). Theres super dungeon explorer if you fancy converting a super deformed anime fig into a S.d Vocaloid. Some infinity models might be converted into her possibly . But no ones made a 28mm voca mini to my knowledge, so you'll have to convert or commission.

[CaptainShrike]

3d printing... Hmm never considered that route. I suppose I was put off as a few things I've seen (ie multi-part plastic 28mm 2005-era dalek) were rather pricey.

I'm not really experienced with 3D modelling, but getting models is more or less covered: there is a fan-made program called MikuMiku Dance, or MMD. It's original use was to make dance videos for songs created in Vocaloid, but it's more often used to create funny Youtube videos, kinda like GMod. There's been plenty of versions of the Vocaloids and many characters from games anime etc that have ported to it, and I have the tools to port them into a 3DS Max scene. From there I guess I pose and save as an OBJ or whatever.

I'll look into kingdom death, and look at Infinity a bit more thoroughly.

Thanks for the help so far!

[catwell]

There's a few issues with doing a print off of a model built for animation.

Models built for printing and models built for animation are constructed differently, a anim model has textures, is constructed to aid movement and flexing, is constructed from lots of separate pieces to aid rigging and normally has single plain poly pieces.

A printable model has all its detail modelled on physically(no bump maps,transparency maps, textures etc) , they're made from solid totally enclosed pieces with the normals facing out, and no non 3d pieces (like flat plainar polys used for things like hair and cloth in anim models).

In short anim models need a lot of work to turn them into printable models.