Foldable Me and GeekMom recently got together to fold the GeekMoms into tiny blockheaded 3D self-portrait models that we designed at the Foldable Me website. Take a look at our final products, and join our raffle to win your own Foldable Me.
The idea was initially inspired by GeekMom Kelly’s post about her foldable experience. I liked the thought of a real-world, 3D avatar, not just the familiar ephemeral stand-in on a computer or game screen. This seems especially attractive in an online community like the GeekMoms, where we don’t necessarily get to meet-up in the physical world.
I started thinking about uses for a Foldable Me as a gift, memento, or as swag from a party or meeting. Also I was curious but uncertain about possibilities for the blank, unprinted foldable forms. These allow you to draw and color any kind of person, monster, or alien that would fit into the shape of the Foldable Me, and then fold and assemble it into the little figure. I am thinking it would be fun to turn one into a mini tree topper for my miniature Christmas tree, which is full of handmade mini stockings and mittens. Sophie suggested creating favorite celebrities or pop culture icons… Maybe a series of time traveling doctors??
Foldable Me offered GeekMoms the opportunity to create ourselves in folded form and report back to you. Judge for yourself the results in the gallery below. Creating the Foldable Me is easy: Go to the foldable.me website and decide whether to create a female or male, because all the feature and clothing customizations are bifurcated along these gender lines. This is actually a feature that could be enhanced: It could be enriching to be able to pick from the full selection of shirts, hair, glasses, etc. In today’s world there are few choices that should be limited to male-only or female-only.
Next you work through a series of choices to add details to the blank model on-screen. Every time you make a selection, it appears on your model so you can see the effect, and you can spin her to get a 360-degree view. This presented me with a surprise, because when I selected a style to reflect my long swooping bangs, spinning the model revealed a ponytail, definitely at odds with my short, trimmed-around-the-ears cut. Mandy couldn’t find a style to get her generally pulled-back hair right, and so styled hers loose, but that isn’t her usual look.
I enjoyed making my mini-me; I had the most fun analyzing the shape of my facial features and trying to make a good facial match. Since the FM head is a block, obviously this isn’t going to be an absolute simulacrum (for most of us). They do offer multiple facial shapes using shading and hints of outlines, as you can see from the varying shapes in our GeekMom gallery. Although many options for such things as position of lips, eye and nose shapes, and skin tints are available, several of us missed having freckles as an option.
As the head is a block, so the body is a pillar. One GeekMom commented, “My Foldable Me has no baby weight!” Another said that to be recognizably her, larger bust depictions would have to be offered. (Foldables appear to be descended from a family of moderate endowment.) Perhaps the gents at Foldable Me don’t quite grok the psychic connection between shape (or shoe style) and personal identity for extensive female demographics. There are no options for bust size–not even some shaded indications, as they have for facial shape, would possibly help to diversify bust options and make women feel better simulated. I don’t know how many shoe styles would be needed to make the world a happy place, but only a handful of mundane shoe styles are currently offered, although to be fair, there isn’t much space for more detail in the foot area.
Glasses are important to a geek and some of us found looks that worked, and others did not. Marziah suggested building the FM without glasses and then manually adding “just right” glasses colored and cut out from paper. It would also be fun to manually add your own tokens of your hobbies and professional specializations, like a paintbrush, game controller, dangling pair of toe shoes, or a teeny origami flower.
GeekMom Dak wished hers could be dressed in a geeky tee, to match her real-life geekery. As it happens, Foldable Me is now inviting suggestions for slogans or mottoes that could be offered on the Foldables’ shirts. You can see examples and submit your own suggestions for tee shirt slogans at the Foldable Blog site.
Each Foldable Me order is printed per your selected options and shipped from England, on flat card stock. You punch it out, crease, fold and assemble, following clear diagrams. A single model costs $11.99 with a discount for bulk orders. Sadly, there are no cats, dogs, or robots currently available.
GeekMoms had fun taking the Foldable Me offerings out for a spin. Check out our gallery of photos to judge for yourself how accurately we recreated ourselves. My family thinks mine resembles me pretty well. A couple GeekMoms mentioned resemblances to Minecraft characters.
Foldable Me Offers for GeekMom Readers
You too can join in the foldable fun with the special offers to GeekMom readers from Foldable Me: Use the discount code GEEKMOM to order a Foldable for $9.99, and enter our raffle for one free Foldable Me by entering comments below in the next week. To win, you must provide an active, monitored email address (so we can notify you) and respond within 48 hours of our contact. For your entry, use the comments to tell us what would be the best part of being four inches tall.
And now… The Winners! The folks at Foldable Me were kind enough to increase our prize to three free figures, so we have three winners, based on a random drawing. Thanks to everyone who entered and shared thoughts on a four-inch life! From the comment list, our winners:
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Kim
Pam
Karen
Note: Foldable Me figures were provided to GeekMoms for review purposes.
A little model of me to put in my desk chair at work when I am out would be great! Hopefully I could enchant it to do work for me.
Mine’s on my desk – so far she hasn’t done any work for me *L* .But she’s cute
I could sneak a little me into the displays I do for work! She’s be so cute hiding among the books (or even better, the “I-Spy” displays).
That “best part of 4 inches tall” immediately took me back to when I was about four years old and would just sit beside the herb garden, staring into a mass of parsley, and wishing I could be small enough to go down in there to explore it like a forest. I’ve always been fascinated by size points-of-view– by miniatures and dollhouses, by extra-large things you can go through, whatever… I’m happy just thinking about that parsley patch now.
I have mine at home, with Ruler of All Things Paper… Maybe they’d like to spend some time at work, on my desk or bookcase. I have nice window for them there.
I could live in a house made of legos!
4 inches in height
Such POV might
Give troubles new light.
A 4-inch-tall me could be the actual elf on a shelf, watching over my 8 and 10 year old, while my actual self has to be at work. Although my hubby works from home, I hear all the time how I’m not home with them and have to hear their stories second hand instead. However, if I could get that 4-inch-tall me to take over my office work while that actual me is home with them, that would be even better! Either way – a clone is what I need!
I think the real danger is that once you have one for yourself… You irresistibly want ones for everyone else in the family! Then there will be clones for all of them, and who is watching whom? But that is a good plan, a clone and an original, spread out to work and to home.