For Hornet's head I looked far and wide for a good Pepakura file and could not find one. So I figured I would just make one! However, to do that I needed for first make a 3D model in Fusion 360.
Reference
Since the game is in 2D, that wouldn't have helped me too much so instead I used a 3D fan art rendition of Hornet. Here is the a beautiful model completed by JuanchoAbad (Sketchfab) which was based off 2D design by Yoshiyaki (Deviantart). I chose this as my main reference for the 3D model. Since I could rotate the model in Sketchfab, I rotated so I could get a front and side view of her head before I began to model.
Now I'm a beginner in Fusion 360 so I had to watch a lot of YouTube videos to get a baseline for how to build some of these shapes. I don't think I'll do a tutorial on how I did this but I will place some recommended YouTube videos (here, here, here).
So here is my finished 3D model and then I needed to verify it's size before I ported it over to Pepakura Designer. To do that, I loaded my model into Armorsmith Designer ($30) it is a paid program but is really nice to verify sizing before spending all this time taping together over 100 paper pieces. After I was happy with the sizing, I exported the re-sized model. I moved on to turn it into a pepakura model.
There are way too many polygons for a pepakura build. So I imported into Meshmixer so I could reduce the total number of polygons. Luckily that process is pretty easy. I just loaded my model into Meshmixer then selected the whole model > edit > reduce and kept reduced by percentage until I was happy with it.
Finally once in Pepakura Designer ($38) I could start the unfold process. Now you can download Pepakura Designer for free and do many of the features, HOWEVER, you cannot save your work which is why I bought it. If just want to print an existing model then you just need to download it.
Since my model had an inner shell, there were many pieces I had to move off of my printable area (red circle). Then I did my test "Tetris"-ing I could to get the rest of the pieces all within the borders of the pages. The lowest I could comfortably get it was to 22 pages. If I really spent the time, I could have reduced but card stock is cheap. I printed the pages onto heavy card stock.
I cut each piece out, followed the instructions on which folds (mountain/valley) and taped it all together with some regular scotch tape. I checked for scale and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I will be building a cap on the inside so the head sits more upright on my own head since I'm holding it up in the picture. It looks bumpy right now, but this was more to give me a pattern to put on to foam. Once I'm ready to transfer the pattern to foam, I will use a sharpie and make new cut lines for my pattern pieces
Plan for Storage/Transportation
It's pretty clear this will not fit in a suitcase. So I plan on making the horns attach magnetically so I can remove them for easier transport and storage. I haven't 100% figured out what material I will use to stabilize the horns but I might try short PVC pipe sections to not add too much weight.
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