It came from below

So got the Trygon mostly built.

The based Trygon.

This project had several challenges, starting with the eyes and culminating in the base. If I had planned it out a bit more I could have actually made the head swappable and still kept the light up eyes. But alas I didn't.

The eyes were the first challenge. There isn't enough space to put 2 LEDs in the head, so I needed to use one LED with fiber optics for the eyes. But even that came with a challenge. The distance from the base of the neck to the eye sockets is fairly short, short enough that the Fiber optics doesn't have enough distance to allow the fiber optics to bend. So I had to find a way to make the fibers bend with out snapping. The answer? Heat. I just needed to heat the fibers enough so they would become pliable, then I could bend them to the angle I needed and let them cool. Once I had the LED set in the neck, it was just a matter of carving out the eye sockets and gluing the fiber optics in place.

The next challenge involved installing the wires in the body. This was a challenge because of how the model is designed. The chest, the abdomen, and the thorax are each separate parts that are themselves made out of halves. So I had to make sure to pass the wires through each half with out interfering in the ability of the parts to be assembled.

Then came the real challenge:

The base for the Trygon.

I wanted to make the Trygon look like it was bursting out of the ground which meant that there had be to ground being thrown up. I watched that scene in Starship Troopers, where the bug comes bursting out of the ground, like 50 times to get some ideas. Once I had a rough idea I went about making the design so that it would accommodate the battery, switch, base of the Trygon, and the wires.

Bottom of the base showing the battery and switch.

From there it was largely a matter of building up layers of cork board and then adding additional layers of bits in layers to show the ground being thrust upwards. Once I had the layers of cork down, I added a layer of glue and put down a combination of sand, gravel and modeling dirt.

I added an extra layer of 2mm thick styrene on the bottom and installed magnets in it. This allows me to change the battery and flip the switch.