Show me your smile

Continuing to give this JP "cyclops" raptor figure a new face. I've made new parts to replace his chewed off snout and chin, and attached them, but as may be apparent, he still needs some work.

I glued in the tongue next after attaching the snout and chin, while I could still fit tools into the mouth. None of the colour gradients on the mouth parts will probably be very visible by the end, but oh well, it was fun to make them, and maybe I'll reuse the idea for a bigger figure or one with its mouth open wider.

Then I made the rest of the lower lip. With the sides of the mouth being open like that, I thought why not use polymer clay to try to make separate pieces to glue on there, instead of sculpting the lower lip onto the figure with epoxy putty that will need painting later. After some careful measuring and sculpting with mostly a sewing pin, I have these tiny pieces.

I painted some pink onto the insides of the pieces, and would have painted the lip markings on there, too, but after a fitting I determined this part of the lip just doesn't have any, so white it is.

I also dug up a small bit of baked pink clay that I'd cut off when I trimmed the pieces that went to the inside of the mouth. The lower jaw one had a big enough bit left to cut into two mouth corner tissue things.

Then I attached them. The pink piece goes between the old teeth and the new palate, where there's just enough room for it. I painted a blob of pink acrylic paint along the outer edge of the lower jaw mouth piece, so there's no gap between that piece and the new lip piece, the paint filling it in as it dries. Then I stuck the lip piece on there, and carefully painted its edges with glue and more acrylic, trying to get any gaps that could be visible from the inside of the mouth filled with pink paint. Again I doubt any of this will be very visible, but just in case. I can sculpt the outside of the face more later, but the inside not so much after this.

Only one tiny gap left on the lower lip on this side!

And the right side. The pink piece didn't fit between the old teeth and new palate on this side, so it's just trimmed to go under the old teeth. That left some gaps, so I filled those in with a membrane of paint as well. Acrylic paint is plastic, so it can be used to sculpt, too.

The lip on the new piece and on the chin piece matched really well on this side, and are joined together with a bit of glue and white paint.

Before I did any of this, I'd trimmed the head a bit more, as it was pretty asymmetrical. Not sure if it had always been that way or if it was a result of getting half of the face chewed off, or maybe I just attached the new parts all crooked. Either way, shaped it a bit with a boxcutter. I saved the bigger pieces I shaved off, because free texture. I went ahead and glued a piece of the old lower lip onto one of the brows to patch up a missing spot (behind the eye on the right side, before-patching-up state visible on the photo above this one).

I glued on the left eye. It's one of the glow-in-the-dark polymer clay eyes I made for Singer but didn't use for him.

Next pass with epoxy putty. Sculpting the mouth corner and filling in and texturing the lower jaw on the right side. The green bit at the seam of the clay chin and the figure's original jaw stump is taken from that pile of face shavings. I think this piece is from near the corner of the jaw on the other side of the face.

Fourth pass, counting the jaw attachings. A mouth corner and some jaw texturing for the left side. There's one more pasted on piece from the face shavings pile, but it's more under the jaw and not very visible here. The lower lip also no longer has that tiny gap. It'll need painting on the inside, but it's just that one spot.

Inspired by the idea of pasting pieces shaved off of the face back onto it in places that need more instead of less material, I sculpted and baked some more pasteable scale texture with polymer clay.  Since epoxy putty has a time limit for working with it, texturing is kind of quick, so this helps a bit in not half-assing it.

I used pieces of scrap clay that I probably wasn't going to use for anything else on account of it being too linty or soaked with liquid clay after having been used as a bowl for it. Now those pieces can stop floating around the bottom of the bag and be useful after all. I didn't use all of the texture I made, but I'll save the rest for something else.

Fifth pass: going around the snout's sides and the seam between the snout and lip to shape and texture it. There's a bit of the figure's original lip as a crease near the left eye in addition to the polymer clay texture (and the small bit of white on the upper lip on the left is one of the figure's original teeth poking through). I also closed the scratch across the right eye.

Sixth pass of epoxy putty for the head: filling in the brow arch on the right side, as well as shaping and texturing the top of the head. Also made the dip between the back of the head and the neck a bit less prononounced.

And on the left, also sculpting the brow, and finally the eyelids.

With the seventh pass I focused more on other things about the figure, but also added a tiny bit of material to both brows and just above the left mouth corner.

He has a face again!