Easy Alphonse (FMA)

I have been trying to get my hand on an Alphonse Elric action figure  for quite a while.. It aint easy to find one that is really posable. 

I originally started trying to make one with lucky 13, however with that design, it is not easy to construct skin and bone connection - there are a lot more moving parts and tolerance is a big issue in fitting model together. 

Easy13 provides a simplified design and thanks to soozafone's creation, I was able to make this a reality. 

The body model mostly come from wii game prince of dawn, released by model-resource. 

The helmet is from jace1969's model on printables. 

While the bigger body part inhibited some range of motion, this figure is still very posable and I am happy with the silly poses it can make. 

===== printing ======

The print is separated in 2 directories - original easy13 parts and remix parts. 

For the original easy 13 parts, besides hand, the joints are suitable for both left and right side of body. 

However for the remix parts, whenever you see a “2x” part, please print it with one part mirrored so you can have a left part and right part for assembly. 

The prints pictured here were printed on Bambu X1c with 0.4mm nozzle, mostly 0.15 height. 

Use support, use brim as needed. If you are attempting this I hope you have enough experience for judging best print orientation. These body parts are small, hope your printer is dialed in enough. 

The filament I use is bambu grey PETG for joint and bambu Blue Grey PLA for body part. 

I may need to find same color in PETG at some point.. 

===== Assembling =====

The assembly is moslty the same as easy13. It is recommended to first print and assemble an easy 13 with soozafone's instruction and start replacing the parts with corresponding Alphonse's parts. This way you have very little room for error.  ( reality is I am too lazy to make instruction : p ) 

There is one joint that is significantly different from easy13 - the long shoulder ball. You can see one of the ball has 2 pins poking out, that side should be connected to the chest joint. 

Then the additional body part shoulder ring should then be connected to the rectangular shape close to the chest side ball joint. If you like to make lots of pose, the shoulder ring part might fall out easier than you like. Consider CA glue that joint to avoid losing piece that way.

Finally the loin cloth.. I was using one piece of mini lens cloth from those install kit for screen protector. It is a bit stiffer than what I want but it is also sturdy enough. I do not have any design for cutting this.. You can first try cutting a few with paper, decide the shape that works best for your liking and then make the cut on with the cloth of your choice. 

Install it through the 2 small rings on the abdomen piece, and I simply tape the cloth behind the abdomen piece. 

===== No commercial use! =====

I made this purely because.. I want one. And after I made it I want to share this to people who also likes Alphonse.

The source material is copyrighted, and easy 13 also does not allow commercial use. so please do not try to sell models of this. 

===== Design process =====

I got a few inquiry on how this is done. Here is my process: 

• I use blender, it is easy to handle loose mesh, which is often found in game model files
• First put together a T-posing Eazy 13 dummy in blender
• Convert the model file format to STL, and load it into blender, size it so the height of the model fits the Ez13 dummy's height
• change the post of EZ13 dummy so the pose is same as the model. Move the joints to the right place on the Model and modify joint / body piece as you go- for example Alphonse has wider shoulder and hip, very slightly longer upper arm
• Cut up the target model into corresponding body parts, for most symmetrical models you only need one side of the body. 
• Either make the body part into solid mesh, and boolean cut the negative space of joint into the right spot ( for example, the arm pieces for Al is done this way ) 
  Or make the body part into a not too thick shell, and boolean union the Ez13's body piece to hold the joint ( example are the chest and abdomen armor piece for Al ) 
• For joints that likely would have body pieces hitting each other within the desired range of motion  ( i.g. elbow / knee  double joints ), pose the model into the range of motion you want, and boolean cut it so the range of movement can be done after you print it. Shoulder / Hip also have a really wide range of motion that you will need to be careful for. 
• Print, test fit, test pose, modify, reprint  - until you are happy with it. 

This is an adaptation of a animation character using easy 13's joint and design. While it is mostly a reskin of the body parts, some of the joint were altered to fit the character's design. 
There is also a new part ( shoulder ring ) being added with additional design on shoulder joint.