ALIEN BUG SET 1

KIT assembly instructions

DOWNLOADABLE 3D CARDSTOCK MODEL

SCALED FOR USE WITH 28MM GAMING MINIATURES

BUY ONCE, THEN PRINT AND BUILD AS MANY AS YOU NEED!

THE BASICS OF PAPER MODELING:
TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT
GLUE

There are a variety of glues and adhesives on the market, some of which are nicely suited
to building paper models. White glue (also known as PVA glue), glue sticks, Uhu office
pens, tacky craft glue, and sometimes even superglue (cyanoacrylate adhesives) all have
their own uses. For the great majority of the time, however, you can get by just fine with
white glue alone.

SCORING AND CUTTING TOOLS

You'll want to have, at the very least, a sharp hobby knife for cutting parts out of the
printed sheet. Scissors are not recommended. For scoring, you can either gently drag
the hobby knife across the fold (not recommended), or use specialty tools for scoring
without cutting into the paper. Embossing tools such as the ball stylus, an empty ballpoint
pen, a scrapbooking bone folder, or even secondhand sculpting tools with smooth and dull
blades are great tools for scoring without breaking the paper.

STEEL RULERS

To precisely guide your cuts or scoring, steel rulers come in very handy. Unlike plastic or
wood rulers, steel rulers are resistant to sharp hobby knives. You can get by with just a
normal 12-inch steel ruler, but you may find that a smaller 6-inch steel ruler is a lot
handier and easier to deal with when making small cuts. Along larger parts, steel rulers
can also be used as a bending brake.

HOBBY TWEEZERS

Sometimes you'll encounter folds that seem too small to do with your fingers alone. In this
situation, a pair of hobby tweezers like the one shown to the left is very handy. In effect,
they act as a set of tiny fingers and a miniature bending brake, allowing you to crisply fold
very small parts.

BLACK, GRAY, OR DARK GRAY MARKERS

When you cut parts out of the sheet, the edges are naked white. This generally results in
a less than pleasing visual effect when the model is fully built, and this is dealt with by a
technique called “edging”. When edging parts, you will be doing two things: coloring the
actual edge itself, and coloring in a portion of the glue tabs. The best marker to use for
edging is one that has a soft chisel tip, and which doesn't bleed through thin cardstock.
The markers pictured to the left are calligraphy markers with 2mm and 3.5mm chisel
tips.

CUTTING PAD/MAT

A good self-healing cutting mat will help your hobby knife blades stay sharp longer, and
protect your work surface from damage.

©2005-2006 Christopher Roe/Ebbles Miniatures. All rights reserved. Permission granted to photocopy for personal use only.
THE BASICS OF PAPER MODELING:
TIPS AND TECHNIQUES
Basic Techniques

1. Scoring: Scoring is a technique used to make folding easier by pre-creasing the paper along a fold line. The most
common method of scoring is to lightly drag a knife blade across the fold line, slicing through the upper layers of the
paper. The recommended method is to instead use an empty ballpoint pen or a ball stylus tool to gently compress the
paper along the fold lines. This prevents the appearance of unsightly naked edges and makes for a much stronger model.

2. Cutting: Cutting may seem to be a glaringly obvious technique, but a few pointers are essential. For the majority of
cutting where paper models are concerned, a sharp knife and a steel ruler are far more precise and efficient than a pair
of scissors. Save the scissors for separating individual parts or groups of parts from the rest of the sheet.

3. Burnishing: Often, you will be building parts that are composed of flat fold-overs. In order to ensure that they stay
straight and do not delaminate after building, you will want to burnish the two halves together. You can use your finger, a
smooth and flat tool, or even a little rolling pin. Burnishing forces the two layers in a flat fold-over together, spreading out
the glue even further and squeezing it into the paper fibers for additional bite.

4. Edging: Edging improves the appearance of paper models considerably by hiding the naked edges of cut parts. Anything
from color markers to soft pencils and various types of paints may be used to edge parts. However, in most cases,
matching the color exactly is less of a concern than simply matching the contrast. For most purposes, three or four
shades of gray from lightest to darkest will more than suffice.

5. Backcoloring: For parts that are open volumes, which expose the unprinted side after assembly, you may want to use
backcoloring to cover the unprinted side. Backcoloring is similar to edging, except the entire unprinted side of a part is
colored in the desired edging color after cutting out and before assembly. Backcoloring is effective at making open parts
appear solid. Backcoloring is also very useful for masking alignment errors when cutting out flat fold-over parts.

6. Folding and Gluing: Depending on the thickness of the paper or cardstock used, some parts may be difficult to
assemble with fingers alone. In this situation, a pair of tweezers is worth more than its weight in gold. Tweezers come in a
wide variety of sizes and jaw shapes, and some of the more exotic shapes are fantastically useful for assembling tiny parts.
Tweezers can be used to fold tiny flaps and clamp them in place while the glue sets, as well as making it much easier to
attach small parts to other parts.

Special Notes
1. Gluing Tabs: This model includes integral gluing tabs for joining certain parts together. However, the utility of gluing
tabs decreases proportionally as the thickness of the paper or cardstock increases. Thick cardstock or paper can be used
for printing this model, but it is recommended that you try a test assembly before committing wholly to assembling a
model. If the gluing tabs won't fit or otherwise throw off the tolerances of the finished test assembly, leave them off the
parts entirely and cut your own gluing tabs out of scrap cardstock.

These separate gluing tabs should overlap both of the parts to be joined, and glued to the unprinted surface along the
joining edges of both parts. This is called “backing”, and a side effect of this is that parts will fit more or less flush. Backing
parts with separate gluing tabs also generally yields better modeling results, but the integral gluing tabs are retained for
the convenience of beginners and those who prefer to use thinner media for their paper models.

2. Sealing: In most cases, sealing the model with varnish or other form of spray sealant isn't necessary. However, if you
want to add further detail to the model with decals or paint, you may want to seal the model with several light coats of a
waterproof glossy clear sealant first. This will protect the model from a moderate level of moisture, and the smooth
surface will facilitate the application of decals. You can also apply a final coat of a matte clear sealant to kill the gloss
afterwards. Keep in mind that the simple act of sealing a model does not necessarily render it waterproof, and that any
application of waterslide decals needs to be done with great care.

3. Reinforcing: At times you may need to reinforce large pieces, either to make them heavier or to increase their
strength. To do this, you may wish to glue toothpicks, craft sticks, or other suitable items to the interior of a model.

4. Weighting: If you find that your models are too light, you can weigh them down by gluing various ballast items to the
inside of the model. Some items that come to mind include pennies, ball bearings, and washers. Affixing these items to the
unprinted side of a model before folding and gluing it into shape will give the model a significant amount of heft and weight.

©2005-2006 Christopher Roe/Ebbles Miniatures. All rights reserved. Permission granted to photocopy for personal use only.
IMPORTANT ASSEMBLY TIPS AND NOTES
When building models of this size, there are some important tips that we strongly recommend that you follow, in order to
achieve the best possible results for your efforts.

Use Tweezers For Small Folds

For best results, use tweezers as a bending brake when dealing with small folds and tabs. Tweezers have the effect of
acting as tiny fingers, and make the process of building small parts much easier. Tweezers are also excellent clamps, and
allow you to hold tabs in place tightly until the glue sets.

Don't Score, Crease Instead

This model uses much more subtle fold lines that are a darker shade of whatever the underlying texture color is. The
purpose of these subdued fold lines is to be much less obvious at the typical viewing distance of 2 feet or greater. This
helps present a cleaner, more realistic appearance. The subtlety will be lost completely if these lines are scored, because
exposed white cardstock or harsh edging will ruin the effect. Additionally, the very close spacing of some folds at this size
means that scoring will actually greatly weaken the model and obliterate a lot of visual detail.

As a nice side effect, creasing eliminates the need to edge each and every fold line, and saves time in the end.

Backcolor Open Volumes

To make the build process much simpler when using thick cardstock, many parts of this model are simple open-ended
cylinders with connector tabs protruding from one or more sides. The net effect is that each limb segment has only one
glue tab for you to deal with, rather than several tiny glue tabs. However, a side effect of using open volumes is that the
unprinted side will be visible. If you color the unprinted side of these open volumes black before folding and gluing them
together, there will be no exposed whitespace showing, and these open volumes will actually look solid.

Backcolor Foldover Parts

Some parts of this model are simple 2-ply foldovers. In order to hide any alignment problems when cutting out these
foldover parts, you may want to backcolor the part before folding it over on itself. This way, you will eliminate the majority of
obvious whitespace peeking out from misaligned cuts or folds.

Edge Before Assembling

The best time to edge your parts is immediately after cutting them out and creasing them, and before gluing them
together. This way, you will be able to better control where your edging marker goes, and you will not need to worry about
hard-to-reach areas.

Don't Sweat The Small Cuts

Small parts mean much shorter cuts, and using a steel ruler to align your cuts is usually not necessary for most small
parts, because the cut lengths are short enough that freehand cuts are easier to do. Many parts of this model lend
themselves well to freehand cuts due to their lack of long, straight lines. The trick is to take your time and follow the
contour of the cut lines. With a small amount of practice, you would be surprised at how accurately you can freehand
small cuts.

The same principle applies to creasing, since many of the fold lines are also short enough to easily freehand.

©2005-2006 Christopher Roe/Ebbles Miniatures. All rights reserved. Permission granted to photocopy for personal use only.
Instructions: Page 5 of 9 Ebbles Miniatures http://www.ebblesminiatures.com

ASSEMBLY INSTRUCTIONS
02

03

SCUTTLER, STEP 1

04

01

SCUTTLER, COMPLETED

01R

slasher bug, step 1

01L

©2005-2006 Christopher Roe/Ebbles Miniatures. All rights reserved. Permission granted to photocopy for personal use only.
Instructions: Page 6 of 9 Ebbles Miniatures http://www.ebblesminiatures.com

ASSEMBLY INSTRUCTIONS

02

slasher bug, step 2

03

06

slasher bug, step 3

04

slasher bug, step 4

©2005-2006 Christopher Roe/Ebbles Miniatures. All rights reserved. Permission granted to photocopy for personal use only.
Instructions: Page 7 of 9 Ebbles Miniatures http://www.ebblesminiatures.com

ASSEMBLY INSTRUCTIONS

05

slasher bug, step 5

slasher bug, COMPLETED

01R

SCYTONID, STEP 1

01L

©2005-2006 Christopher Roe/Ebbles Miniatures. All rights reserved. Permission granted to photocopy for personal use only.
Instructions: Page 8 of 9 Ebbles Miniatures http://www.ebblesminiatures.com

ASSEMBLY INSTRUCTIONS

03

SCYTONID, STEP 2

02

05C
05R

05L

04R 04C

SCYTONID, STEP 3

04L

SCYTONID, STEP 4

©2005-2006 Christopher Roe/Ebbles Miniatures. All rights reserved. Permission granted to photocopy for personal use only.
Instructions: Page 9 of 9 Ebbles Miniatures http://www.ebblesminiatures.com

ASSEMBLY INSTRUCTIONS

SCYTONID, COMPLETED

SPECIAL NOTES
Stiffening and Reinforcing The Legs

All three models in this set have legs composed of

flat foldover parts. Since these parts support the
weight of the models, and also absorb any
stresses incurred by handling, you may want to
stiffen them and make them tougher.

The best way to stiffen the legs is to use a brush-

on cyanoacrylate glue. Cyanoacrylate glue is often
referred to as "superglue" or "CA glue". The kind
you want comes in a bottle with a brush
applicator, as shown to the left.

Brush a thin layer of glue to the undersides of the

legs, and let it cure. If more stiffness is desired,
brush on an additional thin layer and let it cure.
Repeat until satisfied.

Be careful when using any sort of CA glue!

©2005-2006 Christopher Roe/Ebbles Miniatures. All rights reserved. Permission granted to photocopy for personal use only.