How to Make Pipe Cleaner Action Figures

Series Summary

What distinguishes an action hero from the rest of us? Sure they have super strength and nerves of steel, but their real standout feature is their costume, their appearance, which contributes immeasurably to their recognition factor. Superman doesn't change from his Daily Planet work clothes into the anonymous coveralls of a filling station mechanic to fly across the sky, he puts on his flashy suit so everyone will know who he is. The look of these figures is so ingrained in our collective consciousness that they don't have to be depicted in much detail for us to know exactly who they are. We can recognize Batman's cape in a few quick scribbles, the Incredible Hulk's torso with a few blobs of green marker and Darth Vader's mask in the careful twist of a couple of black pipe cleaners. That's right, pipe cleaners. Sound intriguing? Watch this series and you too can recreate a wire and fuzz Darth, along with his nemesis Luke Skywalker and comic book figures like Iron Man.

In this series of free crafts videos, our young comics and science fiction fan (and professional actor) Halley Joseph Eveland will talk you through the creation of pipe cleaner action figures. As you bend, twist and snip your colored pipe cleaners, watch these fun versions of your favorite Star Wars heroes take shape before your very eyes. And these are not simply stick figures, but artistic creations with muscles, capes, masks and of course light sabers.

Video Transcript

"Hi! You are watching Expert Village and I'm Halley Joseph Eveland. As you can see, I make or create little tiny pipe cleaners guy also know as Chenille sticks to some people. This is Puncher from Marble comics. As you can see I have a lot of this stuff. I can make them in less then a minute and I've been doing this probably since I was seven. Just developing techniques and getting use to certain structure for everything. I guess the reason I started doing this was because I was a big action figure fan and I open one up and bring it home and I would be disappointed because you can move the arm like this. Or he did not come with a certain accessory or maybe he broke because you know. Some action figure companies make them to fragile now days. So I just started developing this little technique from these little tiny pipe cleaners that I found at home. It has gone from that to a big built hobby. They are getting pretty advance know as you can see this is Hock Eye from avengers with the actual working bow and arrow. You can take the arrow in and put it back in his little back back and he is ready for wahtever adventure the adventure have next. I have enter this in a couple of contest these things on the black board and this diagram I have entered in the Los Angeles County Fair. All of them have got first prize. Some of these are little older then, these are some of my older techniques over here with the Star Wars. I'm especially proud of them. This is the Alice and Wonderland which was last years contest. I enter contest here and there. I basically make these for me and my friends to hang around with. Let's see let me give you another example here is a Tuscan Raider from Star Wars. I have used silver to make the gun and small pieces like that. Another good example of using shiny is Wovern here with is claws in the classic brown and yellow costume which I think his first appearance was in 1970's. Ya I think so. So today I'm going to show you how to make a pipe cleaner guy."