Wednesday 3 April 2013

Building the Mournfang Wolf

I made decent progress on my Mournfang prototype last night, but he's still not finished. Some things remain to be done, and others may require some rework. As of now, this is what he looks like:
Starting to look more like a wolf and less like a Mournfang
From the other side

So the sum total of my efforts last night was the building out of his tail, his remaining 3 paws, the rear legs, a bit of fur up on the top of his shoulders and some ears. Most of this stuff I'm pretty happy with, but I'm not so sure about the ears. For one, I was using a Thunderwolf as a guide for the shape of the ears, and they seem to have slightly non-standard wolf ears. Secondly, I think I made a mistake simply building on the location of the Mournfang's ears, rather than completely removing them and building the ears on the top of his head. They look wrong to me now, and I think they're going to get re-done to make him look more wolf-ish.
The ears... They're just not quite right...
And from the other side
I made a bit of an effort to work on his face, but my efforts were stymied slightly by how hard it is to cleanly carve out green stuff, even when it's properly cured. The stuff is just so damn rubbery. In future I will never plan to do anything that involves building something out of green stuff and then cut it away. The face in general still needs work, so together with the ears, the majority of my efforts on this guy will be focused on his head now.
The tail maketh the wolfy?
For all that I am discontented with my progress on the wolf's head, I am pretty happy with the other end of the model. My efforts to reshape the back legs of the Mournfang have come off reasonably well, and I think the tail more than anything (except maybe the snout) has turned the model into a wolf.

So where to from here? Well, I feel like I have made decent progress, but it's still taking too long. I have to finish this model and his rider, then do the whole thing 2 more times before I can paint them. I have made no effort to add armour at this point, and I'm not sure that I'm going to have time. If I don't however, I'll still need to fur over the remaining bits of material around the shoulders as well as cleaning up the lower parts of the saddle. Whatever I do, when I sit down to work on these guys tonight, I need to be well on the way on converting a second wolf by the time I stop.

5 comments:

  1. Hi There. Fantastic conversion! You may want to try and cock the ears forward. Flat ears indicate submission or fear in dogs and wolves.
    A great reference here:
    http://1onewolf.com/lakota/Wolf/communicate.htm
    Regards
    Herman
    My WHFB blog:
    http://borderprovincetrouble.blogspot.co.nz/

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    1. Cheers mate. I will definitely consider the position of the ears when I re-do them. I don't imagine a Mournfang-sized wolf being very scared of anything...

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    2. You're welcome. My son is converting Zvezda Bulls into mournfang mounts. Took him on in a mega game at our club on Saturday. Still has a lot of work to do, but I think his riders are looking good

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  2. If you add a bit more blue stuff to your mix, it will cure a bit harder and may facilitate easier carving. Experiment a little.

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    Replies
    1. Yeah, I know you can mix ratios, although then I will have leftover yellow stuff! I think if I'm going to carve out something after it hardens, I'll make a point of using my Magic Sculp instead.

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