January 17, 2007

At this point, the sculpting is done, and it's time to take the first of the casts. I didn't take any pictures of the final sculpting, but went ahead and started the cast of the nose, pictured here. The cup is a dam, to hold in the material, and the blue stuff you see inside is RTV silicon. The RTV picks up details well, so I decided to use that for a cast of the nose, rather than the eurothane.

Once this sets up (at the time of the picture, it's in "no touch" mode for 6 hours or so), I'll pull the cast off, then have to clean up the clay messed up by putting the dam in place. I'll make sure the nose still looks good after pulling the cast, since it will also be cast under the eurothane, and I'll just use that if it looks OK.

The nose is one of the few areas which won't be covered in fur, so having it look good is of high importance. Most of the rest of the head I can live with being slightly dimpled, or less than perfectly molded. The nose, though, has to be good, since it's not only uncovered, but right in front of someone's eyes when they look into the character's face.

(Edit: Hmmm... Those ears don't look symmetric, do they? I think I'll have to fix that once it's out of "no touch" phase!)

I know this character wants to have a muscle suit, so he's not just a human in fur; certainly looking at Dar'Rushk, from Lance Ikegawa, that's required for anything approaching realistic. Luckily, I happen to have a muscle suit lying around.

The suit pictured below was warn under I'akua, the jaguar. While he's still technically wearable, I haven't actually worn him in years, and he's showing his age anyway. The suit was a bit experimental; the muscle suit and fur were seperate, to see how that works. In a word, it doesn't. So, I'm going to steal his muscles and give them to the tiger, after some changes. The tiger needs a back or side zipper, so I am going to have to seal up the front and move it to the new location. Right now, I am leaning toward a side zip, since that makes it at least possible to get in and out without help. Certain areas of padding, including the jack-legs also need some work.

To be honest, I am going to steal some ideas from Dar'Rushk...