I am under the impression that stance is used for bulls.
I prefer more docile bovines.
Ha, that, for me, is the easy part.
I’'m more of a topologist than a mathematician.
Just curious - why material on the foam? If it’s just for the colour, EVA foam takes paint quite well.
As for the shape - get a pezzi ball, and cover a 1/16 segment with duct tape, peel off and flatten, then use that for your segments. That’s what I did for some halloween pumpkin heads last year, as well as parts of my Afrikaburn sculpture this year:
You don’t need to know the amount of cloth that will actually be used in the finished sculpture. You need to know the amount of cloth that you’ll be buying, and you won’t be able to use all of that cloth perfectly efficiently.
The simplest solution would be to get a rectangle of cloth, with length equal to the circumference and height equal to half the circumference. This will let you wrap it in a cylinder around the sphere, and then tuck in the tops and bottoms of the cloth to the poles of the sphere. You might or might not cut darts into the cloth and sew them together.
If you’re willing to use smaller pieces of cloth, you might be able to come up with a clever arrangement of cloth wedges that makes more efficient use of your cloth, with less wastage. Your call on whether that’s worth it.
Aesthetics, primarily. I prefer the “plush toy” look of t-shirt material to painted foam. But also I don’t have a spray gun, and manually painting is harder than gluing on cloth.
I use rattle cans. But whatever works for you.
The most efficicent use of cloth would be to cut sort-of-triangular wedges with curved sides, but that would result in a seam around the equator. Otherwise, with each bulge being a complete piece of cloth, there’s a lot wasted (as darts or cut-out.) If it’s t-shirt like material, soewhat stretchy, then there’s plenty of room for error.
I would draw a cross-section of one of the bulges at the equator, and measure how much longer the outside edge is than a simple circular arc. Then apply that percentage excess to the amount of cloth to buy.
How big is big? A diameter of 3.14159m??? Who is this for, Peter-Peter?
So I assime you meant about 1.5m diameter, for an adult with legs sticking out? Or better yet, what width is the cloth you buy, if it has to go from the head-hole up top to the legs-hole? I assume about 6 ft or 2m, give or take. Allowing a 40cm hole on top and 60cm hole in bottom, subtract those from the circumference and the cloth wraps the remainder of half the circumference:
1/2C = (20 +30) (half the holes) + 200cm (the cloth bolt) = 250cm
meaning C is 500cm so diameter is 5/pi or 1.6m (5 feet roughly.) That’s still a might big pumpkin…
If there were none of those billows/indents you could do this with 5m of cloth wrapped around the equator and cut to fit.top and bottom… If making the billows/indents adds say, 20% length, the 120% of 5M is… wait for it… 6m.
Of course, if the cloth you buy is not 2m wide, adjust numbers accordingly. for 1m wide cloth,
1/2C =20+30+100=150, and diamter is therefore 300cm/pi or about a meter. More manageable, but small for an adult, ideal for a not-tiny child.
OTOH, this assumes a spherical cow, er, pumpkin. Pumpkins tend to be wider than they are tall.
And of course you must make a brown tapered bent conical hat that the person wears for the stem.
Thank you! And I had not considered the stem, but that too is a great suggestion.