Can’t forget his antennae!
I ordered some thinner doll skeleton when I ordered some for his ears.
I carefully carved 2 funny looking suction cup shaped foam pieces using my softer dense foam.
I referenced the maquette for these. In the movie the tips of his antennae are often draw like bunny little bean shapes, but I believe this is a stylistic way to portray the suction cup shape. As I stated earlier I decided to use the maquette as my true reference.
I drew a pattern, cut, sew, and hot glued the concave parts into the foam.
I then had to hand stitch the bottoms closed over the foam.
The finished tips were then hot glued onto the doll skeleton.
The antennae tips add +4 fabric pieces and +2 foam pieces.
At the same time I used duct tape to pattern the entire head and ears!
Okay, this part gets a bit complicated so hang in there!
I have glued on the nose to the foam base at this point in time.
Each antennae have 2 pieces. They do start wider at the base, taper as thin as I could go with the doll skeleton, and then get just a touch wider again at the tips.
This does not really show or translate due to how fluffy the fur is but hey, I know the work is there.
These were hand sewn over the doll skeleton and to the tips. +4 fur pieces.
Now the head was all done up in a way that I could gain access to the inside in order to glue it down.
I had to once again hand sew up the curvy back markings to ensure that there was no puckering.
I then had to hand sew up the skin at the following points
-ear/jaw
-antennae to hair tuft
-back of the head to antennae
-back of the head down the middle
-philtrum
-around the mouth
-around the nose
+21 fur pieces (probably? I am starting to lose count at this point)
Finally the ears were sewn up and glued on.
They were hand closed up around the fronts of the ears, and then to the head fur.
+6 pieces of fur? (again starting to lose count here)
So close to completion now I can taste it!
But alas, I now had to painstakingly stitch around the edges of the fur to the fake suede.
Do you remember that I had used the contact adhesive on the fake suede and this made is very thick?
This meant that I had to use pliers for every single stitch!
This took literal hours!!! About 4-6 inches every 1 hour. I have about 32 inches to do for each ear!
BUT AT LAST
The task was completed!
I then shaved the ears.
My reasoning behind this was that Stitch is portrayed with almost no blue fur showing when his ears face forward. I wanted to try and get that look as best as I can!
The teal chin was also shaved for he looked very silly with so much fluff in his mouth.
The final parts of him have come together!
His eyes were carved out of the previously cut dense foam.
These eye shapes were then covered in a black fake suede that was stretched tightly, and then glued carefully only on the back side.
These soul piercing eyes were then hand sewn onto the head. +2 fabric pieces +2 foam pieces.
The head was then sewn onto the body and I added a touch of thread sculpting in-between his eyes at the front.
The new grand total of fabric pieces is 290
and foam 12
I could be wrong but at this point I think you get it.
It’s a lot!
Here I was playing around with the eye shines using some paper.
The smaller ones look much better!
In the last photo they are painted on with a light blue, thus completing Stitch in his base alien form!
I had started making his space suit here but the next page will show the construction of that :)
