For those of you who do not know, Lan Fan is a character from the anime/manga series Full Metal Alchemist.
Sketching the Design
Due to the fact that this build had a round profile, rather than sharp edges, I had to make sure the the shape I had was accurate. So I started off with a drawing on top of a picture of a blank crafts mask. As you can see, the mask has barely any straight lines. Instead the design has smooth curves following the profile of the mask. The forehead has the "Yin" part of the "Yin-Yang" symbol (Lan Fan's grandfather has the yang portion).
Modeling the Mask in CAD
This step was probably the most difficult out of all the steps, as creating a curvy and smooth face was very difficult (at least for me) in Fusion 360. I started off by importing reference pictures of the side and the front of the mask (which I found online), along with the design that I had sketched out previously. Next I pulled out a sphercical "form", which is basically just a 3D shape with faces that can be manipulated in various ways. Using this spherical shape, I attempted to mold it to the shapes of the mask in the imported images. After that, I slowly extruded parts of the mask so that the design could be seen, cut the eye holes and mouth hole. For the actual model that I was planning to use, I would not have the extra extruded parts; the design would just be painted on later. The forehead and eyebrows were probably the hardest part. I ended up settling on an extruded forehead that was connected to the rest of the face by chamfers as eyebrows. Although this was different from my original plan, it turned out pretty well.
Unfolding using Pepakura
For this project, this step was extremely tedious. The unfolding process itself went relatively smoothly; I just had to take a second try to export the model with a lower poly count (meaning the number of shapes that formed the smoothed surfaces). The part that was truly time consuming was arranging all the pieces. For some reason, Pepakura decided to separate the mask design into extremely weird sections. I ended up hand arranging all the pieces before printing them out.
Finalizing the Template
I actually had to print out and build multiple paper versions to find the size that correctly fit me. This took a while to do per size, so I only constructed half the mask (as you can see in the picture).
Starting the Cardboard Construction
For the actual construction of the mask, I used the cardboard from a shoebox that was just lying around. The outside of the shoebox was laminated with paper, so I decided to use that side as the inside of the mask. During the process in which I was folding together the forehead of the mask, a problem emerged. I forgot to account for the thickness of the cardboard which resulted in the forehead becoming too wide. I solved this by cutting m