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General Napoleon Le Chimp

The monkey army is placed under the command of the able general Napoleon Le Chimp. The young Napoleon quickly reached this position partly because of his brilliant strategic skills, but mostly because he had the biggest hat. Le Chimp is very popular with the troops for his "tactical retreats". He has yet to win his first battle, but he remains optimistic that fortune will change between now and the next 50 battles. Famous quotes from Le Chimp include: "Protect Le Chimp", "I'm a monkey, Jim, not a general!" and "Now where are those bananas when you need one?".

On converting General Le Chimp:

Being the army general, I wanted Le Chimp to stand out from the rest of the troops. In keeping with my desire to make this a lighthearted project, I decided to model him after that other "little" general, Napoleon Bonaparte. This would be achieved through the hat and the famous position of the hand reaching under the coat.

The base for this conversion is a normal rank and file fezzed monkey. This will require some modelling skills because we're going to cut him up pretty badly, so there's no way back. Sensitive minds should not read any further.

Right, first we have to remove the raised arm. This arm is attached to the head, which means the monkey will most likely lose an ear in the process. You have to amputate the arm completely, as it won't bend all the way into position. When you have the arm, hold it against the shoulder (don't glue it yet!), but upside down , with the arm pointing downwards instead of upwards. Now bend the arm at the elbow until the hand is pretty much where we want it. Got it? Good, now it's time to remove the fez, as it's slightly too big to sculpt our hat around. After removing the fez, go back to the amputated arm and cut off the hand. Don't look so shocked, how do you figure we're going to hide this thing under his vest? Do another test fit and if it's right, then glue the arm in position. This concludes the cutting part, on to the sculpting.

The repositioning of the arm will have left some gaps that will require touching up. First, there's the shoulder joint. Simply put a small ball of putty in the gap, smooth it out and use a sculpting tool or needle to draw some lines on it in the same direction as the monkey hair. For the chopped off hand, just extend his coat with green stuff to cover the stump. Depending on how succesful you were at bending the arm in the right position, the elbow may or may not look entirely right, so if you want you can add a little putty at the lower end of the arm to smooth things out (like I did). Nothing very hard there.

The most difficult part will be the head. Because I'm not as good with the putty as those professional sculpting gods, I did this in stages, starting with a small ball of putty where the fez used to be. Then I added the back of the hat first, basically a flat piece in the general shape of a bicorne. The pointy ends were slightly curled towards the front (to meet those of the front part later on). This I let cure until the day after. When the putty was dry, I added the front of the hat (same basic shape, and joined the ends at the base of the hat with the backside part. Do NOT join the back and front part of the hat elsewhere! This should give you a basic bicorne. If you're not entirely satisfied, you can go back to it when it's fully cured and add green where you feel it is needed. Finally I decided to add a small cocarde to the left top. For a flat circle, you just roll a little ball of putty and flatten it on the right spot. Alternatively, you can do what I did and put a tiny ball of green stuff in the right spot and push into the center with a piece of wire or a cocktail stick (I used the end of the spearshaft the donor for Le Chimp was holding before he had to give up the hand). The result isn't a perfect circle, but it's not as flat either.

Click here to return to the Monkey Army Project index.

 

 

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