I tried to do a bit more work on my clay lion and discovered a flaw in my plan.

 

 

A new design for the buffalo's horns - more like the real thing. Yes I know they're blue. This was going to be used to make a plaster mould so that I could make the horns from hot glue, for strength and stability, as the lion has to swing on them. I've since decided to use Fimo clay which can be set hard in an oven. It turns out that Fimo clay is fairly expensive. You can see from the Biro placed in the images above how big the horns are and so I bought some Fimo clay - just enough to do this. It was only when I was about to start that I remembered that if the lion has to swing on the horns it will be usefull if he can be secured to them during filming. This means that the horns can't be solid and will have to be made from regular newplast, fitted with an armature. Each mistake makes you realise how important planning ahead is, especially when it costs money.

 

Fitted a tail to the lion since my last post. I used the thin wire doubled up and drilled a hole in the body for one end, which was then just glued in place. I had read somewhere that its a good idea to cover armatures with cling film before applying the clay. That's easier said than done. Especially when parts are spinning around while your doing this. I've used plastic rawl plugs to sleeve the wire used on the legs, for stability - the wire can only bend at the joints as opposed to anywhere on the leg. The trouble with this idea is that the wire is much thinner than the centre hole which means that the rawl plug section tend to spin around easily. So you can imagine the fun I had trying to put cling film on the rawl plug sections while they kept moving. I ended up with such a mess that I had to use selotape to tidy everything up.

 

I was eventually ready to start adding clay

 

I flattened out small sections which I pressed onto the body

 

The seams could then be pressed together

 

The body is already looking a lot bigger than I had intended - which will mean increasing the size of everything else

 

It was when I started applying clay to the legs that I discovered the flaw in this design.

 

I had thought that the spinning problem would be solved when I added clay but it was still happening. In the end I had to remove the clay - and half of the cling film - from the legs, and glue each section of plastic to the armature.

 

It now looks fairly messy but at least the problem is sorted. I also cut about 5mm off each section of rawl plug to keep the size down. It's still fairly big and I'm beginning to wonder if I should build a smaller armature - considering that he has to fit under the front of the buffalo when he rubs his buttocks against it's legs. Anyway for now I'm going to add fresh clay to the legs and see how he looks.