onsdag den 9. marts 2011

Finished Dragon: The wings

Another little piece of advice: Don't ever never ever sculpt something which require a large set of wings attached to it! If you do anyways, here's how I did it:

Make a frame for the wings using wire. When wrapping a wire around another wire do your best to wrap it tightly. If you don't, it'll stick out and give you a lot of grief when applying the sculpy. I wanted my wings to be pretty lightweight to minimise strain to the wireframe. Therefore I had to be economic when applying sculpy to the membranes on the wings. This is when you'll be glad you spend the time necessary to make a good quality skeleton!


I made the membranes by flattening a large amount of sculpy like cookie dough. Then I cut it into appropriate sizes and placed them on top of my frame. I worked one piece of memebrane at a time, so each individual wing would require four pieces of flattened sculpy to make. lastly I used my fingers to flatten the sculpy as much as I could without exposing the wireframe.


The day I had to attach the second wing had arrived. I'd baked the dragon and the unattached wing and then, after taking a deep breath, I proceeded to drill into the shoulder of the dragon. At this point I'd decided to strengthen the shoulder by adding a layer of Green stuff  (also known as Kneadatite), to the shoulder and also to the drilled socket itself to as a shock absorber to the sculpy.Green stuff unlike sculpy is not brittle, but quite bendy and won't crumble or break as easily.

Green stuff is a two part epoxy component which cures after a day or so of being mixed. This would be perfect to use as I'd already baked the dragon once, and didn't want to risk it getting burned by another go in the oven. It was also useful for repairing cracks in the sculpy, which had appeared after the dragon had been baked.


After adding the layer of Green stuff to the joint I had to let it cure. Luckily, I had a roll of toiletpaper I didn't need, to stabelise it while it did so.  


The green stuff at the tip of the wing was added because the wing, being unattatched to the dragon before being baked, had to be stapled onto a wooden frame for it be sculpted properly. The green tip of the wing is the covered piece which had been stapled to the wireframe.

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