Started	:	Too long ago.
Finished	:	May 18th, 2007
Base	:	A Lego fellow
Parts	:	More Lego stuff
Materials	:	Apoxy Sculpt, green stuff, Glues, Citadel Paint, wire, synthetic resin (stand), magnets, presumably a bottle cap
Points of Articulation	:	~ 5 or so (if you're REALLY generous)

Character & Intent

Okay, what do I need to say about the show "Invader Zim" ? 
For most, it's a love-or-hate thing. Or a love-first-then-hate-after-
far-too-many-reruns thing. Often that.

Anyway, since I know that I'll never get my hands on the Invader
Zim figures that Palisades put out and because I fancy having some-
thing that will more or less blend with common 6-inchers such as
the former greatness of Marvel Legends, I sought to create my
smallest figure thus far. And by golly, that was grueling. I'm not even
sure how long the pitfalls and complications of this thing took me to
overcome, but it was well over half a year. I've learned a lot, though.
A lot of things I never want to do again.

But hey, GIR ! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee !

 Creation

For something this small, only one base accessible by me could be
chosen... A Lego figure. And surprise - Those are hard to modify.
At least in non-lego ways. ... At least taking it apart was easy.

The original arms were removed and replaced with lego antennas.
Unfortunately, I can't quite remember how... But I think that I cut the
arms off below the shoulders, dremeled those down and glued the
antennas on top. The tips of those were replaced with Lego wrench-
parts while the bases were sculpt over a bit to round the shoulders
out.

This sounds much quicker in writing than it was in practice, by the way.
Small parts, little space for the glue to hold, lots of attempts, fingers
glued together, parts glued to fingers, screams of despair... etc.

The bottom of the Lego torso was filled up and most of the surface
was resculpted. Then I drilled holes into the bottom and glued wires
into it, to which the legs were sculpted. This was the closest aproximation
of Gir's impossible floaty legs I could get - And it's slightly posable.
Then I drilled the feet's "soles" hollow to insert tiny magnets. I had
no illusions about Gir's ability to stand.

And then it came to the complicated part - Neck and above.
I had this entirely crazy idea of making Gir's eyes swapable to portray
a broader range of poses. To achieve this, I chose to use circular
Lego one-blocks. Is that what they're called ? 

But using those, I had to make a head that would provide plugs. After several
failed attempts, I simply went with indentions into Apoxy Sculpt, which worked
after another few attempts. Sculpting the eyes on top of those tiny carved-down
Lego parts was another thing that took a long, long time to get right.
The head itself was - If I remember right - Sculpted around a small bottlecap to
provide a certain stability, which was important for the plugs to hold. The antenna
was a relatively late addition and is nothing more than a twisty tie with some apoxy
on top.

By far the most difficult part, however, was constructing the neck. I knew that
it would absolutely need side-to-side AND up-and-down motion, as any posed
interaction with other figures would never work without it. So I devised a complicated
construct made of different ground-down and glued-back Lego parts, which took many
attempts and months to get right. And when I had finally finished it, painted the figure and
started taking pictures... it broke. Irredeemably. I was a little pissed.

So the finished figure just laid around in it's broken lack of glory for weeks. Until a small
miracle happened. Of all the things in the world, a Kinder Surprise Egg's (Don't bother,
American friends, it's banned in the USA) surprise toy turned out to be a Lego Bionicle
ripoff. And it's arms were actually ball-jointed. And tiny and skinny. And everything I
needed Gir's neck to be. So something that took me months and months to get right
was replaced in the course of less than an hour. Funny how that worked out.

Did I forget anything ? Oh yeah, the display stand.
Short story told short, I knew that Gir would need one to be able to stand where
there is no metal. So what I came up with was a resin duplicate of movie "Flame
On" Human Torch's fire stand with a magnet in the top and some nice
hand-sculpted smoke on the bottom.

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