a triangle lives here

EGG-12

I made a guy. Its name is EGG-12:

a robot shaped like a speckled brown egg with blue arms and legs stands nobly in an egg carton. It is carrying a grenade launcher and looking into the distance.

This guy. This guy has been wiggling in my brain for a VERY LONG TIME

Way back when I first went, "hmm. Should I try building a gunpla? Is that a hobby rabbit trail I should fall down?" I saw a picture of this kit[1] and went, "ha ha. it a little egg guy". It round, it has a cavity inside for a mini robot to sit in--which gives the minibot a eggshell hat--and its stubby limbs are Just Right. I never really sought it out, but I kept seeing it here and there and always went "hehe egg". Shortly after I started really doing a lot of painting details on these, I saw in my mind's eye this weird little round robot again, with a white body to fulfill its eggly purpose. When I got the kit, I expanded my mind's eye further and went with an even more Beautiful Egg, brown and speckled.[2]

EGG-12 running toward a chicken egg resting on a kitchen counter. The egg and the robot's body are roughly the same size.

The thing is, tho. I couldn't stop there. I plotted and planned, from paint job and. Beyond.

The paint job tho--i'm pretty proud of it. I "preshaded" the arms and legs with blots of color underneath the final color to give it a subtle modulation (it doesn't really show in the pictures at all). I used a pink underlayer on the yellow and the brown to make sure they came out warm and solid. I obsessively mixed two Perfect shades of brown--one base, one for speckles--and then sponged the egg instead of brushed, intentionally overworking the paint as it started to dry to give it an eggshell texture. i went and gave the eggyolkbot inside a colorshift sensor, which was something like 15 or 16 layers of paint. On top of it all, i went and gave the limbs a high gloss finish while giving the body a carefully calibrated flattening to perfectly match an egg.[3] This is also the first guy I have fully painted every part, and not just sections! I did a good job.

A portrait of EGG-12, standing with its grenade launcher at rest in front of its body. The mini robot stands next to it, with its eggshell 'helmet' lifted up. The mini robot is egg-yolk yellow with a shiny pink-to-purple visor eye The back side of EGG-12. Its grenade launcher is lifted up in a salute.

So. The uh. The other thing. the Beyond part. Somewhere during the paint job I thought, "this guy has a story. it's not just a robot that looks like a egg. it is an egg. why is it an egg. what does it want. where is it going."

When you have a billion bits to paint and sometimes a million coats on those bits, you end up having a lot of time to dream. and dreams make even more things. Things like.

zines

Egg 12 sits on a computer desk mat, reading a zine about itself. The zine is larger than the robot.

Mobile users. You'll have to forgive me. I'm about to hijack your phone's orientation. Hopefully this works...

A comic strip about EGG-12
CSS Crimes Notes Yeah, OK, that works acceptably. I've been struggling to figure out how to show this off in a web-ish way. I think this idea could use some iteration, but it's mostly how I saw it in my head. Next zine?

I used aspect-ratio to lock it into something close to a page spread, and <picture> to serve a different orientation depending on view width. I think if I put a blank section in front of the cover and at the end so it starts and ends offset and then made the page separation a little clearer this might be Just Right?

My thought was "this egg turned into a hero kamen rider style, with its powers directly entwined with the evil it opposes"--created by being forgotten on the stove for too long and as part of a sometimes harsh cycle of food, it rejects (and at first is unaware of) its dark origin and seeks to do as much good as it can. I also thought it would be funny if the zine itself was a fiction wrapper to the fiction. I am still laughing about naming the creator Al Bumen. I've been thinking a lot lately about how much I want to make a zine, so when I finally realized I could fit a small story in the tiny package of a folded 8 pager I got Very Excited.

It turns out I actually hate folded 8 pagers as a format, tho! I've made a zine or two, but always as cut & stacked folios stapled. This style is very very fast to make, but next to impossible to crease neatly once you go to fold it into a closed book shape--too much paper where the spine wants to be. Now that I have scans, I'd like to format it so I can print two copies on a sheet of paper printed front and back; I think that'll look much nicer.

EGG-12 runs from an egg carton towards the camera. The diminutive hero looks very determined

Art for art's sake is a delight. I just went and yes and-ed myself six times and have a cute little guy sitting on my desk AND a little comic for it. It's great. Making things is good; I recommend it.

That's all I've got for now. Any final words, EGG-12?

A moodily lit cast iron frying pan holds EGG-12. It is distraught: on its knees, crying out to the heavens in despair

  1. Bandai's 30 Minute Mission EXA Armored Assault Mecha in case you need to know ↩︎

  2. I almost went with a robin's egg and a different color of limb but chicken egg won out. Me and my sibling have a Thing[4] about eggs, and specifically the ones one normally eats ↩︎

  3. I literally sat down with an egg in one hand and this in the other. This guy even feels like an egg. ↩︎

  4. ask me about the Cult of Egg sometime ↩︎