Painting Soft steps and Daydreamer

I'd say painting adult Soft steps and Daydreamer, but I never painted their baby figures (except Soft steps' pupils). But, yes, that's who these two are!

First, eyes, for some reason. Soft steps' eyes are very pale, so I painted over them with white before giving them their correct colour, to cover well the orange. Daydreamer's eyes were, on closer inspection, a little off their intended placement, so I had to touch them up, too, despite not changing the colour, but it would have bothered me otherwise. Both have glow-in-the-dark paint on their eyes - Daydreamer as a thin line around the pupil (not visible in normal lighting because it's translucent and close to the yellow in colour), and Soft steps over the entire iris.

Like with Tumult, I also covered up Soft steps' epoxy putty additions, and the dark stripes where I'll paint her base colour instead, with off-white before starting on her actual colours.

Extreme measures

New birbs on the waiting to be repainted shelf of bookless dinocase. By the time you're reading this, I've already started painting them, but here's a "before" shot. Both may look familiar:

The one on the left is an Extreme Damage JW raptor, another of which I repainted into Tumult last year. Like with Tumult's figure, I first patched up the extreme damage feature, using foil as filler and epoxy putty as sculpting material, and fixed a balance issue with one of the feet.

The one on the right is a Savage Strike JW raptor, whom I've had for a while now, but now I finally know who it's going to become. Kind of strange it took so long, considering this figure is actually pretty much perfect for the character. The other one is going to need to become a very different colour, but picking the same sculpt as Tumult's figure felt fitting, in more than just that I like how it looks.

Making a little birdie for my birdie shelf

What do we have here, a cute little easter chick decoration with white feathers? Perfect for...

...cutting off its wings and beak!

( Wait, what? D: )

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

'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.)

Wounding tooth, now with tooths

I finally got around to that partial repaint of the Walking With Dinosaurs Troodon minifigure. I touched up the figure's original paint job to give it more detail, and to have it a bit more closely resemble the design on the card that came with it.

Before:

After:

I blended the yellow crest more into the rest of the plumage and added the orange tint the crest feathers have at the tips. I painted the teeth off-white so the figure visibly has any, added pupils and little shines to the eyes, and dark grey to the nostrils to bring them out, too. I also made the blue around the eyes shift a little more gradually to the grey snout and the brown plumage.

I painted the toe claws, including dewclaws. Before doing so I noticed the sickle claws were pretty nonexistent, so I grew them a bit with blobs of acrylic paint before giving them the dark brown colour. Troodontids didn't have as prominent sickle claws as their dromaeosaurid cousins did, but the figure's right foot didn't seem to even have a claw on that toe, and now it does.

I didn't touch the rest of the figure, it's already great. A very pretty, tiny birb.

Painting Beetlebiter

With the boy sculpted, time for paint!

First a base coat of white, to cover up the dark green and the grey putty, and give the character's rather light colour palette a chance.

Limb and tail replacements

Making new extremities to complete the sculpting on the JP "cyclops" raptor figure I'm repairing and customizing into my OC Beetlebiter. I've already made him a new face.

 

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.

Jaws for biting beetles with

That's one of the uses for them, anyway, according to the character's name. Starting to make a new face for the chewed up cyclops raptor. Also here are some edits I've already made elsewhere on the figure.

In addition to the trims I'd already made, to have the inside of the mouth match throughout the jaws, I carved out the old surfaces to make room for the new. Those teeth can stay, as they're close enough to the edges I'll just use them as part of the lips.

Then making those new parts with polymer clay. The figure's original palate had this "this way down the throat" arrow pattern, so I gave the new palate the same.

Painting Singer

With sculpting finished on this figure, I can start painting him! In this photo he already has a layer of light brown acrylic painted onto that finger I replaced. It should help blend the different materials a bit.

A rainbow seen from the window where I put him to dry that bit of paint. :)

Body modifications

With Singerfigure's head sculpted, I also needed to repair a few things elsewhere.

This figure wasn't doing quite as badly as the cyclops when it comes to stray scratches and toothmarks outside the extremities, but there still were a few here and there that I filled up and did my best to blend. I did this little by little with epoxy putty left over from each pass of sculpting the head.