Step three (-ish, since I’m working on lots of bits in a non-linear fashion): PUPPET.
So here’s what I started with — a lovely and charming shoulder dragon puppet I bought at TRF years ago, and also haven’t used in years. Apologies to the maker, but sometimes you just need a base. Now that I’m taken him apart and put a new guy together, I could do it from scratch, but not without doing it that way first.
I didn’t photograph the first step, because I am a jerk and also there wasn’t much to see. Covered the head in my skin fabric; wrapped a scrap bit around the body to try to keep all that marabou out of the way. This is where I had started padding out the head, making the back rounder, adding to the cheeks and nose, and smoothing out the forehead. This is also where I SHOULD have added the eyes, before the final skin, but nope.
Next layer — a smooth layer of skin over everything. This is when I decided I was happy with the head shape. (I was wrong.)
EARSES!
Oops, skipped a ton of steps. Anyway, I thought I was done! I thought I loved it! I thought wrong, so the next day I reshaped the face some more, redid the eyes, and put the skin over them so I could slice the lids open instead of adding them on. (There is no way to describe this where I don’t sound like a monster.)
And tada, Tippy-toe! I do have one little thing to do – right now the mechanism spins so freely that he ends up with his head on backwards if I’m not careful. I’m going to add a wee little piece of elastic between the back of the neck and head to control that.
Yay fluffy thingy! He lives on top of a bookcase for now, since both cats want to murder him muchly.
Neurotic Owl 