Painting Skye and Tumult

You can now find photos of the finished figures here at my site, and
here at deviantart. ETA: and here at tumblr.

The girls, accompanied by Tumult's auntie Shredder, whose colour palette is close to Tumult's so she makes a good reference on that.

Sculpting Skye again: body

Post about sculpting the body of grown-up version of Skyefigure.

Sculpting her head and wings have separate posts, and you can find all the posts relevant to making the figure set Skye is part of in this tag.

Sculpting Skye again: wings

Process of making wings for grown-up version of Skyefigure.

Post about sculpting the figure's head is here, and post about sculpting the rest of the body is here. All posts relevant to making Skye and the three other figures in her set can be found in this tag.

Sculpting Skye again: head

Because making from scratch a toy figure of my first and favorite JW Velociraptor OC once wasn't enough, I made another one, this time depicting her as an adult. This post is about sculpting the figure's head, I have two other posts about sculpting her wings and body. I didn't first complete one part and then move onto the next, and all were in progress simultaneously, but this felt like a logical way of dividing up recounting this rather lengthy birbmaking process (which took from November 2022 to May 2023).

Skye is part of a figure set with her wife and two kids. You can find all the posts relevant to making all four of them in this tag.

I seem to like to start my raptorsculptings with the mouth, and this time was no exception. It's a big part of a raptor's face, so a lot about the rest is just kind of built around it.

Sculpting Cloudburst

The process of making one of my latest two small raptor figures, this one being a poseable art doll, with fabric body, and clay head, hands, and feet.

I actually considered that approach when Skye's second figure was at planning stage, before deciding otherwise. Skye's mom was my first customized existing figure, and Skye was my first figure sculpted from scratch, so I suppose it's fitting Skye's child is my first art doll. :)

I worked on Cloudburst for a little over two weeks from late October to mid November 2022, at the same time as I worked on Tempest, who took longer mostly because I took a break for a while from sculpting her to focus on this figure.

I started by putting together a wire armature. The spine is a long piece of two 0.3mm jewelry wires twisted together. One of the two is twice the length, looping at the tail tip, so it's really three wires. The limbs are 0.8mm steel wire, with the arm and leg on each side being the same piece. There's also a steel wire for the other weight-bearing toe of each foot.

Sculpting Tempest

A post compilation of the process of making a tiny raptor figure child for my two previously-tiny raptor figures. I'll post photos of the finished figure set soon to my site and deviantart (ETA: now posted to site, DA, and also tumblr).

Tempest is sculpted with polymer clay, which can be baked in a home oven, and comes in various colours (and can be mixed into more colours). I worked on her for about a month, from October to November 2022.

As with her mother's second figure, I started with the mouth. I originally thought of making this figure even tinier than it ended up being, but when I decided to have her mouth be open, well, this is probably the tiniest I'm currently able to make these pieces.

Bring on the brushes!

Hey, remember when I said I might finish sculpting my newest Skyefigure by my birthday? That was funny.

I have finished sculpting her now, though! Here she is with Tumult, both still a work in progress and transitioning from sculpting projects to painting projects together.

Both already have some paint on them here. Tumult has a partial first coat of white mixed with a bit of raw sienna, just to cover up the epoxy putty on her sides and the darker markings where I want her base colour instead. Skye has much of the back of her neck already painted, as it was easier to alternate painting feathers and adding new ones there than it would have been to try to fit a brush between the feathers afterwards. Some of her cheek fluff is also painted, the rest of her that's colourful is just made with polymer clay that's already mixed to be that colour.

I'll eventually compile into a couple of posts my ramblings and WIP photos about sculpting Skye that I've posted to my Patreon over the past almost 6 months, and about making figures of Tempest and Cloudburst, too. Hopefully I'll get to show off finished versions of these ladies and their little terrors soon.

The tag for all the posts relevant to this figure set is
"stormraptorfamily figure WIPs".

The tag "Skyefigure WIPs" that I already had is about sculpting the figure of juvenile Skye three years ago. She's all grown up now, so this new figure is an adult version of her, accompanied by her wife and kids.

Raptor preview

As you may have noticed if you've checked my Patreon in the last few days, the surprise is out a bit sooner than intended about what sculpting project I'm currently working on. I've been posting WIPs there as subscribers-only posts, but Patreon in their infinite wisdom had some experiment where most of the text on patrons-only posts was suddenly visible to everyone (confirmed to have been a feature and not a glitch when I contacted support, should be back to normal now but I would have appreciated a heads-up or the option to not participate in the experiment :/), so uh, hi. I'm making a Skyefigure. Again.

This time she can :V

She'll be part of a set with three other figures, which, yes, are Tumult, Tempest, and Cloudburst. The kids are already done, just waiting for the new grown-up versions of their parents to join them. Tumult is going to be a repaint of this figure, the other three are sculpted from scratch.

I don't know how soon Skye will be finished. She's the most complicated one to make out of the four of them, and has already taken longer to work on than her juvie version did, but we're approaching a stage where all parts can be combined, at least. Maybe she'll be ready for my birthday? :D

Some results of clay everywhere

Now clay everywhere

Also bits of foil.

Fluff, fluff everywhere!

'Tis the seasoning

Have this spoopy picture of something I've been working on.

Now she's just extreme

Extreme Damage JW Velociraptor has had her extreme damage patched up with epoxy putty. There's a bit of aluminum foil in there, too, as filler under the putty, as the wounds were quite deep.

The button on her back is a bit awkward since it dips down a little instead of following what I think would be a natural curve for the back, but I hope it won't look too weird once she's painted, and that I won't regret not adding more putty over the whole thing. I decided to leave the pop-up code alone and keep that one functional. I'm not trying to make her look not like a toy, I just want her not to look like she's bleeding to death.

(A note about the materials: I try to remember to mention when talking about sculpting with epoxy putty that it's not safe to use without precautions, such as ventilation and nitrile or equally protective gloves (which are recommended to be worn at least while mixing the putty, but I keep them on while sculpting, too, which I've found is not really an inconvenience so long as I have gloves in a size that fits my hands snugly enough - touching the uncured putty doesn't melt your hands off or anything, but you can develop a sensitivity to it). And a proper mask when sanding it, but I use it to make dinosaurs, which don't exactly need to be silky smooth, so I just don't sand them. Anyway, though this stuff is strong after curing and attaches well to most surfaces and is easy to sculpt, so it works well for my purposes, it hardens by chemical reaction, and a craft project is not worth your health. I feel like I don't see this brought up enough when finding crafting guides and such online and even see people film tutorials where they mix it barehanded or otherwise use epoxy products with no protections, so like, please research your materials, and look into safer alternatives, too.)

Raptquisitions

Well, the damage on this JW Velociraptor sure is extreme. But she's very pretty. I actually like the colour choices enough that it's almost a shame that I have plans for her that involve changing those, but not enough for that to stop me. She'll get to keep the bright orange eyes, though.

I really like her sculpt! It's not quite the same as the Battle Damage one, but it's very similar, and has the same articulation (+ rotating tail). The battle wounds are on both sides, and change into red with a push of the button on her back. It's a neat action feature, and also probably easier to get rid of without a trace, since there's no nub to cut off. Sorry, no bleeding wounds on my raptors once I'm done with them.

This particular one actually has a bit of a defect, as the jaw hinge is very loose, and the mouth doesn't stay closed very well. Not sure yet if that's worth doing something about. The character I'm making her into isn't exactly known for her tendency to shut up anyway.

The figure's second "action" feature is a little code that pops up from her back. Apparently you can scan that and unlock something in some app or another that I don't have, but in case you can scan it from a photo and want it, here you go. I may remove it, or may not. It doesn't really bother me like the wounds do.

Also joining the raptor shelf is a Schleich Utahraptor. Less pretty, but I like the little grin, and the blue colouring on the face. It's strange how few Utahraptor figures I've actually seen, it's a pretty broadly known dinosaur after all, and not even a brand new one. With that in mind, this may even be the prettiest and most accurate figure available for it at the moment?

It does have feathers, even if they're very patchy.

Velociraptors not to scale.