Here is where I decided to keep the foam for making the final head as well as doing something crazy! Making a fully detailed mouth.
I figured I am only doing this once, I might as well!
I gave floral wire a try in order to make the ears thin, sturdy, and even poseable.
This turned out to not work out due to the metal eventually fatiguing and breaking.
It is still a very viable method for making something thin and hold it’s shape however! So long as the piece will not be moved or warped constantly, it will work just fine in my opinion.
The dense foam was used here in order to make a square insert.
The idea is that I can run the wire through the head in such a way the it will not rotate or move.
The square shape helps the piece further by preventing rotation inside of the head as opposed to a cylinder.
Here I used the dens foam again to make a bottom “jaw”
I used a heat gun to shape it to the desired shape.
I also carved and sanded the edges.
Here I was starting to think about how to make the mouth and decided to carve one side of the teeth out of foam just like the body.
I will not use the foam in the final teeth, but this allows me to see what they will look like, and give me a 3D shape to pull a pattern off of.
The tongue I figured I would keep since it has a concave shape that would work as something I can tack the final fabric “skin” down onto.
I also created the nose at this time.
The nose was 4 pieces total. I patterned a back just to make instillation easier later on and to reduce the amount of hot glue used on it.
I only glued down the nostrils to try and give them a concave look.
The soft foam was left inside the nose.
Total piece count at 219 sewn/fabric pieces.
4 foam pieces (I am not counting the head yet).
