The Kabutroid figurine

Woah check it out, a Kabufigure!

A Kabutroid figure sitting on Kabutroid's hand, shiny with paint and an enamel coating. A brown dinosaur looking bipedal body with yellowish scythes for arms, a Metroid for a head, earrings, and tattoos painted on where Kabutroid's are.

Oohhhh, this was cool. So I found a Kabutops figure on Etsy, 3D printing of it. I mixed some tissue paper and glue to clump overtop of the head, after rearranging the head to create ears, and doubling the length of the tail (I always pictured my tail dragging on the ground), and then covered the rough tissue paper with JB Weld (good ol' JB Weld) and smoothed it out with sandpaper, and it's coming out amazing! The rest will have to wait for my paints currently dwelling in England.

<skip forwards> And now that I am there, progress can continue! I've actually been in England a little over a year, but it took some time (and a move) for this figure to emerge, and onwards we go! The next steps were to round out the polygonal angles all over the figure. I had debated whether to leave them for stylistic purposes, but with a round head and back (I always felt Kabutroid should have a smoother back, especially from the smaller sprite, so the figurine's weirdly extra giant back spikes were removed), I really needed to round the rest of it too. Also, I'm not sure why the 3d print creator made the upper arms smaller than the lower arms, so we used some glue covered cloth to build up the biceps to match the sprite.

So, since that bicep construction needed a little bit of work, we created a small sanding tool to get into there. I did try to make earring holes with a heated up head pin, but that wasn't successful, so we ended up ordering a set of miniature drill bits, the 0.7 of which was used to make the earring holes (best purchase ever by the way, these work amazing), which we used after it was painted. Then came the earrings and the base. The earrings took a bit of time, using a dried puddle of pva glue cut to shape to match my most commonly worn earrings, and rings made from the spring of a click pen to make the helix ear hoops. As well, after much pondering, we decided to make the base textured, rather than attempt to paint the common blue brick pattern onto a pentagonal shape, which also annoyed me because in the comic that's technically the "side" of the brick. So we found some crumbles that look well like the lumpy blue ground of the comic, lichen! Thank you fallen branches at the park, you contained a fair amount of lichen growth to give me enough crumblies to coat the base. First a layer of watered down pva glue, followed by a coat of crumblies, followed by another soaking of watered down pva to fully soak and coat the lichen. We also made a few test patches for testing a blue paint wash on it, and also in the pic you can see the first lichen sprinkling compared to the one that has had the second glue layer added to it, for durability and mold avoidance. It'll be covered in enamel regardless, but still, it can't hurt, also the durability part.

And then, blue paint was added, two layers to kinda fill in the bigger gaps between the pieces of lichen a little bit, and then a dark blue wash overtop to give it depth and life. Two layers of enamel, a signature on the bottom, and with putting in her earrings the figure is complete! And ooohhhhh, it looks amazing, and well matches the comic strip sprite :D

Base shape finished February 11, 2022 in Canada, finally finished October 3, 2024 in England

A shiny golden Kabutops figurine on a base, with a red backdrop. Kabutroid's head made with tissue balled and glued to create the round head, and the side planes from the original head are angled upwards to turn into Kabutroid's ears. The Kabutroid figure, being held up, with the head now a grey jbweld plastic epoxy colour.
Kabutroid holding the figure with all of the angular lines smoothed out and rounded, and several strips of cloth glued over the biceps to bulk up the upper arms to properly match the Kabutops sprite, which is shown beside it. In the background is scissors, scrap paper, shavings, and crafting supplies. A fully brown painted figurine sitting on cardboard surface with the brown paint bottle behind it, and the sanded blue mini dice tower case that will be painted as well, and miscellaneous other craft supplies and Kabs's glasses. Held in front of the figure is a small wire bent into a U shape, with a thin strip of sandpaper pinched or wrapped on either side of the U. The Kabutroid figurine in better light with a second coat of brown, sitting on the cardboard surface with tape and gluing supplies for the deck of many things box behind it.
A partially painted Kabutroid figure from the back standing on cardboard, showing the green head and darker green back, with a printout of Kabutroid seen behind the figure. The front of Kabutroid, with the eye orbs painted in darkish red, the breastplate and feet in light yellow, and the claw blades in a slightly darker light yellow, as well as the teeth now being white. She's standing on a cardboard surface with brown and yellow model paints in the background. The back of Kabutroid, with her Metroid tattoo painted onto the upper right shoulder area, and parts of the other tattoos painted on where visible from this angle.
A pair of beaded indigenous earrings containing red, green, and black stripes with large fields of orange and white, with beside them a pair of reeeeally tiny earrings of identical patterning, as close as could be obtained on something less than a centimeter tall. The two tiny beaded style earrings hanging next to three purplish pink rings clamped to a folded sheet of sandpaper to dry, pinned to the top of a toothpick box, as the toothpicks were essential in painting the beaded style earrings. The Kabutroid figure is seen beside them with the accompanying ear piercings. A photo of Kabutroid with the lichen crumble coated base, and the test patches beside it. An inset image shows the lichen coated base just after being sprinkled on, without having the second coat of pva glue on top of it. The base with the second coat is notably flatter, but will be significantly more durable.
A photo of the Kabutroid figurine with the base now painted blue and darkened with a wash, giving it a lumpy blue ground appearance. It is sitting on Kabutroid's computer with the website on the screen. A collage of the painted tattoos on the figure beside the tattoos on Kabutroid, showing them beside eachother, the meow on her right fingers, the metroid on her back, the genderfluid heart on her hip, prairie flowers on her right ankle, and transgender tattoo, bestie dove, and Cree bear paw on her left ankle. In the bottom right are two spots labelled next tattoo. Kabutroid's signature K . T . on the bottom of the figure, a staple of the things that Kabutroid creates. This pic was mainly added to fill out the three across arrangement of the photos, but shows it well nonetheless.
The Kabutroid figurine in its completion, sitting in Kabutroid's hand with her room and spouse in the background, showing the tattoos, lumpy blue base, scythe arms, metroid head, dinosaurish body, and earrings, the completed figure!


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