I wanted to know if anybody had any pointers or instructions on how to make 3d figurines. I am making a cake for a friend who wants monkeys on it. Any suggestions or ideas?

summernoelle has an awesome tutorial on fondant animals. I'll see if I can find the link.

Have you looked on youtube?

yes definantely look on youtube, there are some good tutorials there, i'm not sure any of them are specifically how to's involving monkies, but you can get the jest of it from the ones that are available.
good luck
happy caking

Aine2's fondant monkey
I believe it's just the head, but the body is the easy part (at least I think so!)

Here is the lik to summernolles tutorial

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-593709.html

I went to my local craft store and looked in the clay sculpting section and found three different books with really good instructions. I figured it would also work for gumpaste. Worked great!

HTH
Carol

http://gariesim.blogspot.com/2008/10/happy-swinging-polymer-clay-monkey.html
It's for polymer clay but it'll work fine...

Thank you AfordRN. I got a phone call and had to step away before I could post the link.

I have some fondant monkeys in my photos area - it was my first time making animals out of fondant - it was really fun - I just kept redoing it till I got it right!

I made a monkey for a Jungle cake I did in January, I did look through pic on here...then just started making the pieces. They all pretty much stuck together. The worse part was trying to get the arms, legs, and ears the same size. It's not hard at all, look at pictures, have an idea in your head of what you want to make, mold the pieces, and stick them together. If you look at the picture of my cake, ther are several animals...some had wire, some didnt.