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Watermellon and friend
Published: 2006-10-04 06:24:14 +0000 UTC; Views: 8561; Favourites: 185; Downloads: 20
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Description
This is the creature that I uploaded the maquette of ages ago. It's one of the creatures I've been making for my props course.Yes It's ears were always going to be that big, I just ran out of clay when making the maquette.
The back legs aren't quite right because I left the maquette home the day I did the back legs.
The body is styrofoam, carved with a hacksaw blade, surform, wire brush and sand paper. It then has 3 layers of tissue glass (very fine fibreglass) with pva. Then membrane which is really interesting but hard to describe stuff, to give it texture.
The eyes are pingpong balls. The eyelids are leather. Each pingpong ball has two eyes painted on it and the balls can be turned around to show a green eye or a brown eye. I like giving it one of each.
The mane and tail tuft are fabric fur. the ears are leather, attached with no more gaps. the toes/nails, and tusks are epoxy putty.
The trunk has sections of the styrofoam, with a rope through the middle, then stuffing and lycra over the top. There is a cable that goes through the trunk and comes out at the back of the head. When the cable is pulled the trunk moves. The likke critter on its head will have this cable going into its tail to hide the cable.
I've used lots of new materials and learnt a lot from making it and know how I would do it next time.
Her name is Watemellon XD
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Comments: 53
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Incredible work, congrats on the DD! I love the colours of the critters. <3
I apologise if this has already been asked, but how tall is this? o:
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just went and measured her for ya - 43cm
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Oooh cool.
Do you think it's easier to work at that size as opposed to much smaller? I'm just starting out sculpting myself, and so far I haven't really made anything big! XD
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I Don't think smaller is easier or harder. I find a good balance between ease of putting in detail, and the amount of materials needed it about palm sized. I've made clay food smaller than my finger nail up to a liger bigger than me, but overall most of the things I make are small.
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On a random note: Has anyone mentioned how it could stand as a metaphor for bipartisan politics in the United States? Hehe, the Republican party is represented by an elephant and the Democratic party is represented by a donkey. This reminds me of what independents or people who vote for people in both parties would be represented by.
Anyway, it's really cute!
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nope, no ones ever said that before
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Wow, this is really great! Looks like you put a lot of effort into it.
Congratulations on the DD. You deserve it.
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thanks
It was a lot of time but I learnt a lot from it too and it was lots of fun
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they're made up creatures for a college project learning how to use different materials
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The back legs look perfect! It looks very realistic. Cool concept by the way
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Congratulations on the Daily Deviation. Really a neat piece, and very cute.
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thanks!
I just saw your comment in the top of my comment alerts - thats how I found out.
Never thought i'd get a DD - didn't know it would feel so happy
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Congratulations!! 
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ans thankyou for the recommendation too!!!!
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haha!
thanks
well cute is not the reaction some people have to this - but i think shes cute
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Now that's a cute and original sculpture and I bet he keeps the squirrels away! He keeps the plants company too and everyone wins! Excellent work and congratulations on the DD!
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well we don't have squirrels in Australia so I guess its doing a really good job at keeping them away
thanks
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You don't have squirrels there?? I haven't hear that one before! Well, you do have roos and those are really big squirrels and they box, too!
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I did have a dream about a year ago that there was a really big squirrel, and I was surprised because we don't have squirrels and I hadn't seen one before, and was pretty sure they weren't the size of a large dog - but then it turned into a lion...
I guess if a roo was a giant squirrel, it would have a handy pouch to put acorns in
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I love em both! I felt I should combine comments into one...
We have a chihuahua who's fat and dumpy like the big creature... he actually sometimes sits with his legs in peculiar positions just like that hind leg there just because of how fat my sis's dog has gotten (that's why we colloquially call him the "gator tot" 
I wonder how you got those pingpong balls in there and covered it up so well... or did you just cut the ping pong ball after painting it?
The purple critter is especially adorable... you really seem to have the sewing down. Has the little fellow been 'holding it together', so-to-speak
I've not heard of many people carving styrofoam, so I really love this. I bet all that texturing keeps him rather safe (a problem I'd imagine you'd normally have a hard time fixxing up). I guess you just basted it onto him with a brush eh? That must be tricky cuz you gotta keep the coats even, and styrofoam seems like it would make that a hard task. the ears are splendid, though it woulda been great to do a similar level of detail you did with the eyes and gotten a little more of a 'hole' for the ear canals and wot not. That would have been really hard, though. But you seem to have a knack for clay, so maybe you should consider playing around sometime and add more 'eariness' *guffaws*
Anyhoo... thanks for sharing this and all.
Awesome work...
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I melted holes into the styrofoam (with a soldering wand thingy) that were large enough to get the pingpong balls into, then after it had been tissueglassed and membraned (forming a layer over the styrofoam), I got a knife inside the eyesocket, and carved away some of the styrene next to the outside layer so there was a pocket between the styrofoam and the outer layer. I cut pieces of leather to size, then using warm water, bent them so they were curved and let them dry curved. The already painted eyeballs were placed into the sockets, then the pieces of leather were glued in place, in the pockets. Two smaller pices of leather on each eye made the edges of the eye. 'No more gaps', and more membrane were used to blend it into the face.
I'm not much good with sewing so far - the little critter isn't sewn, its needle felted. It's carved out of soft foam, then covered with bits of wool and stabbed repeatedly with a needle felting needle to knot the wool together and turn it into felt. Then it was cut open, had the cable 'installed' and then needle felted back together. It's holding together fine.
The styrofoam is covered in tissue glass which is a fine fiberglass used for surfboards. Instead of using resin, pva glue was used because it can flex and is much less toxic. Over the tissueglass is membrane. Membrane is a thick white substance that is used to build up texture. To apply it I used a piece of sponge with parts pull out of it (so the sponge had texture), it didn't really need to be even though.
The ears are one of the things I would do differently next time, along with the mouth. They were two things my lecturer commented on, which was good, because now I make sure when I am making something with a decent level of detail that those are two areas I pay particular attention to.
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Thanks for all the additional info and sounds like you learned TONS... you'll have to do some more... is all the extra work you did on the foam 'sculptures' so that they can sit outside or are more hardy? If so, you should totally make scary yard art. In America, it's a tradition that if you are elderly and no longer of any interest to society, you can get back at all the people driving by on your tax-paid roads with dangerously distracting yard art. *at this point, this tangent is so bad that God, Himself, steps out of no where and rips the keyboard from dudy's hands*
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...
wow. I think this is the oddest animal(-couple) I've ever seen ..... and that's a good thing !
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The little one lives in the big creature's mane and eats parasites and insects. So Watermelon stays clean and parasite free, and the little critter gets food and protection from predators.
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Awwww .... I have a deep, deep love for invented animal-character like this.
In fact, I have one running around in my brain as I'm writing this ... no time to model him and thus let him out though.
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