Re: Velociraptor Build Thread; Target Date --> Halloween 2013
OK, here's an update with some photos.
During my breaks and lunch-hours at work recently, I created scaled-up drawings of the raptor's feet and arms. I used the 30-inch long foam head as my "standard", when when using ratios with both my paper raptor model and my toy action-figure model to calculate dimensions. That gave me two sets of numbers for every measurement...and usually, I leaned towards the toy model, because it's more a more-accurate raptor.
Here are some photos of the "blueprints" I made....for the shoulder and upper arm:
... for the forearm:
... for the "hand" / claw:
... and for the foot:
A few things to note about the above items:
1) I'm still not sure whether I want the arms to be completely fake or if I want to take my REAL ARMS and shove them inside some sort of sleeves and gloves. But I'm leaning towards using my real arms. Surprisingly, the scaled-up dimensions from the model aren't all that "far off" from my real arms. Yeah, my real arms are a bit fatter, but not as much as you'd think.
2) Note that the "top view" of the foot doesn't really show it, but the side-view does: I plan on angling the rear two-thirds of the foot to about 30 degrees. That last sketch sort of shows it, but this will be the start of the digitigrade feet "illusion".
Here's where I am with the head so far:
As you can see, I'm very close to the point where it will be time to slice opened / apart his mouth and lower jaw. The photos you see are a bit "rough-looking" because the last thing I did before I took them was to try smoothing out some hard angles with something called "Dragon Skin". It's basically metal sandpaper, but in construction it's almost like... what if you made a really flexible cheese-grater!
Unfortunately, it took off a little too much at a couple of spots.
I think I can do some more shaping to fix most of the problems: I bought some of those thin Personna razor blades and, as on the T-Rex head video over at StanWinstonSchool.com, I glued a blade to a tongue depressor and used it for detailed shaping involving small / thin cuts. So I think I can use that blade to fix some of the problems.
I may also be able to actually ADD a small bit of foam here and there if I need to, using contact cement.
OK, yesterday, I got some basic work done on the feet:
I had emailed my previous foam supplier the previous day. And, to my eternal annoyance, they once again didn't respond to email. <sigh> Pet peeve of mine: Why put your email address on your site if you're not going to respond to it? I just HATE having to call people on my day-off, because I'm on the phones all the time with my day-job.
Anyways, in the interest of starting to build the feet YESTERDAY, I decided to go buy some foam from JoAnn's Fabrics. I had checked their foam out earlier in the week, so I knew that, in terms of density, what they had was just a little bit LESS DENSE than the stuff I'd gotten from Mattress Warehouse of Lenexa. But I also knew that they have a 50% off sale on the foam going on through this coming Saturday. So, I bought these two pieces of 5-inch-thick foam yesterday for about $35.:
And then I cut out my foot-pattern and traced it onto the foam. Next I measured exactly where I wanted to put a 30 degree cut in the foam, so I could create the angle I wanted. I removed that. Then I used contact cement to glue the 30 degree gap back together again:
(Obviously, I have further work to do on these.) My plan is to buy a pair of used boots, make a hole in each green foam foot, and then glue the foam onto the boots.
I did find some brief info here from this
Tauntaun costume build page on using PVC to build a frame. So, I did buy some half-inch and three-quarter-inch PVC the other day and I plan on starting on a body frame soon.
OK, I'm a bit short on time right now to talk about next steps. (But I can tell you my growing concern is what to do for the skin that will go over the foam, since the Stan Winston site STILL hasn't released part 3 of their video on the T-Rex head, which will reveal a technique I've been waiting anxiously to learn about.) I'm a bit busy the next several days, but I took some time off after next week Tuesday, so I hope to really buckle down then.
Thanks!
-= Dave =-