Project Wolfie: Part 2 – The Shaping

Welcome to the second part of Project Wolfie, one of last year’s signature props built for our annual Halloween Haunted Trail (link here). If you missed the first post of the 3 part series, you can take a look at that here. In that initial phase I built the shell of the wolf out of foam board around and inner PVC core. Now it was time to take the 2D template below and refine the blocky 3D shell.

This phase was the most exciting and absolutely terrifying at the same time. There was a significant amount of time invested just to get to this point and now I was getting ready to start cutting it up so to speak. Art and especially the field of sculpting is one of those skills that was always just a bit out of reach – unable to fit it into my curriculums and aftwards never found the time with work and other activities. I have drawn since I was a kid and once this project popped in my head, started spending my spare time watching sculpting YouTube videos. Most of those tutorials were what I call additive – starting from a blank and building up material to the final product. Wolfie was the opposite scenario in that the material needed to be removed. In hindsight, I probably should have spent more time on “carving” tutorials. No glory for the timid, time to jump in.

Hit the jump to see how this phase turned out!

First task was an initial shaving using the hot knife. Since this is a new post, I will restate the warning regarding heating this foam – in particular the pink Foamular board in the inner shell. Melting that foam causes bad gasses to be emitted. Hot knife cutting that includes at least that layer (as well as the white to be safe) should be done OUTSIDE and using a breathing filter to keep those gasses from getting in your lungs. This rough cut smoothed out the jagged edges that occurred during the foam board gluing and allowed me to give a more rounded shaped to the edges.

This was repeated on the other side. The face was clearly going to be the most difficult – gonna leave that to last ha. The hot knife was also a good tool to get rid of the extra leg material pointed out in the previous post. Pretty happy with how the tail came out so early on in the process. The legs look a bit odd as a lot of the white outer foam layer was removed to get them more rounded – bit of an optical illusion, the legs are really not that thin, they are just blended into the pink inner layer.

I thought the hot knife rough cut was messy…little did I know at the time what I was in for during the next refinement. I have a small scraper tool I use for roughing up the edges of my tombstones – works great and really gives them a nice chipped/weathered look. In this case, the goal was to remove a significant amount of material and make it fairly smooth (not chunked). Went back to several YouTube tutorials and learned about something called a “curry comb” which Linda informs me is to remove hair from a horse – she use to teach horseback riding for the Girl Scouts. Farm and Fleet had several different types causing quite the dilemma standing in their horse aisle. After 30 minutes, settled on a round one that had several circular layers in it – you can just see it sitting on top of the wolf next to the tiny 3D reference model. The time taken to make the selection ended up worth it as that tool worked amazingly well. The comb allowed me to quickly round the edges, clean up the tail, smooth out the legs and cut in the upper leg shapes on the body.

Now that was a mess! Although not producing the toxic gas, the curry comb did produce a lot of small particles that are also not good for the lungs. Switched down to a standard breathing mask to keep those small particles from being inhaled. Safety first everyone! Still scared to touch the face, but now the rest of the body was looking pretty good based on the continual checking with the tiny 3D model.

A look from the front. This angle gives a better perspective of the leg sizes.

…and below is the view from the tail end. This is a good time to point out some things I didn’t plan out well. You will see some gaps in the inner shell area. This was caused by having to cut deeper than expected into the shell which exposed some of the layers that were built out of PVC pieces (see first part of series). Luckily, this was being built out of a reusable material. Grabbed the Great Stuff foam gun and filled them in the best I could. Once that dried I could always reshape it down again. There was a more serious issue that cropped up. In a couple of places the rough shaping revealed the inner PVC frame – you can see two of those areas on the back of the left leg – one right under the leg attachment point and another one about 5 inches up. This appeared more of a problem than it eventually turned out to be. The initial fear was that the connection joint would be impacted – lose that and I would have to figure out another way to put a connector in.

The exposed pipe was addressed with a rotary tool and a cutting wheel – trying not to burn the foam, slowly shaved off the exposed pipe until there was enough space to add a layer of spray foam to cover it. The connector had to be ground down with an orbital sander with a heavy grit. Relieved it didn’t impact the integrity of the joint – catastrophe avoided. Mental note for next project, spend a little bit more time constructing the inner PVC frame to make sure it sits a safe distance from the expected final dimensions.

It was time to “face” the fear so to speak – the wolf’s head needs to be addressed – that current look isn’t going to impress anyone on the trail. This is where a digital 3D model would have been a great asset as I could have quickly generated templates for each layer of the head; outer face/muzzle, gums, teeth and tongue. The shaving process would cut away lower layer lines if I drew it on all at once. Chose to make a set of templates for the various layers I could apply one at a time.

Note, a matching set had to be created for the other side of the face.

I was officially way beyond the 2D template used for the basic shape. The only reference I had for the inner layers of the face had to be created from scratch using the tiny model and several images on the net which showed what the inside of a wolf’s mouth looks like. Oh, and special thanks to our puppies that let me do some up close observations – yes, they got plenty of treats for their contributions.

This was slow and meticulous work and apologies for not getting much in the way of detailed pictures that showed the steps. Basically, I would transfer one of the face templates on the head and shape the face down with the curry comb to match those lines. Then transferred the next face template on and shape that layers down. Now into finer detail, switched to a Dremel with a heavy cutter on it. Used this smaller tool to shape down two more template layers finally revealing the teeth and tongue.

Now to move to the other side and repeat the process.

A lot of detail work was still needed, but this was my official first sculpt of a face. Well, technically my second as I had made a 1″ by 1″ bear head out of clay to make a bear skin rug for Linda’s miniature log cabin – we are way beyond that child’s play now ha.

Spent some more time cleaning up the rest of the body with the curry comb until I was happy with the overall look. Cleaned up the mess, did a quick pat on the back and then started making plans to detail out the face.

I am still not sure what the best method is to shape the mouth. Several sculptors I follow on YouTube all seemed to take different approaches when it came to detailing that feature. Some carve it all in place with steady hands in a tight space. Others took a more building block perspective and simply cut out the inner profile of the mouth and glued back in each of the features like gumline, teeth and tongue. This appeared to be a much easier method as they could shape those features outside the mouth and get to the desired level of detail without worrying about nicking a tooth or gouging into the muzzle. On the downside, that would require gluing and might make it harder to get the proportions right.

Weighed the options and decided to try it in place first – worst case I could cut it out and try it the other way. Bri likes to work with a safety net – especially on completely new endeavors.

I didn’t bother to take pictures of the smoothing process as it basically consisted of going over the wolf frame with finer and finer grit levels (increasing grit numbers) on an orbital sander. For the tight places, had to either use the sandpaper that comes on a foam core single pieces wrapped around a dowel rod. Completely surprised how smooth that turned out!

Now that a majority of the “messy” steps were over, Linda let me bring it back into the house – she quickly regretted that decision when she saw the fine dust the Dremel was propelling throughout the basement. The extra cleanup it caused me was worth it as it allowed me to work on it until late at night and out of the Summer heat (and quickly run and look inside one of the boy’s mouths if stuck).

Slowly got the features cut in.

Decided it would officially pass as a wolf.

One of the struggles with doing the carving in place was getting the dimensions of the two sides to match. That would have definitely been easier with the build up approach as I could have seen both sides at the same time. Jury is still out what I will do for future projects.

Now time to get the wolf prepped for paint. This meant filling in all the holes – switched to LocTite foam which has a tighter structure. Fill, sand, fill again, sand again and on and on until I was happy with it.

Very pleased with the current state of the wolf. I made a point NOT to keep track of the hours spent on this project – some things you just do not want to know ha!

I have to give credit to my brother Ron for this next step. He pointed out that there were pretty big gaps between the 7 attachment points. This was after I had spent time trying to sand those connection points smooth so they would fit tighter. If you have ever tried to smooth flat two independent surfaces, you already know how hard that is, get off plane a bit there and then you have to start over – then to match that to the other side – nightmare.

Opted to take a different approach. Leave one side as is and try to form the other to fit. Grabbed some wax paper and tape it to one side of the attachment point. I then covered the other side with a thick layer of LocTite spray foam and attached it to the mating side. Scraped the excess off and sanded back down the edges.

I love it when a plan comes together. The wax paper made sure the two halves did not stick together and now I had a perfect fit.

This looked a LOT better. Rather than take it apart to remove the wax paper between the joints, simply took a razor blade and cut off the excess. When the time comes to disassemble it after the party I would take the wax paper out. Thanks for the constructive observation Ron.

It was officially ready for the paint phase. Stay tuned for the third part of the series where I’ll take you through that process and finally reveal how it looked on the trail. Will also admit to some of the details I did not get finished in time.

Take care and hope you enjoyed more behind the scenes looks at one of the latest props for the Haunted Trail.