Journey's End was a hard, long project and I worked some months on it. I did not use the right technique for the building, because I just daven't had enough expirience with such props. Today I work very differently, but this is a story for another post.
I was glad, that my sister gave me the Broll Bearmantle Figure of the World of Warcraft figure series for my birthday. So I got the perfect sample for my work
My first step was to find the right form for it's head. I painted the silouette on greyboard, cutted it out and copied this to a second greyboard. With these two parts I made a sandwich of greyboard and soft foam for filling. The foam also helped me to model the elevation of the snout, the jaws and the neck. I used crepe tape to model with this foam and covered it with newspaper after this.
The base was done. Next step was to cover it with paper machè, which gave it a solid base.
There was still a lot to do and you see that I had to work on the ears, the crest and the antler. And at this time I really had no idea how I should build the last one...
Some days later it looked a bit more like a horse head. You see, the ears are just pieces of greyboard. The crest was made of foam, which I covered with crepe tape, newspaper and paper maché again. Now I tried to build the antler. And that was really hard...
Here you can see my second try to make an antler for my staff. My first attempt was too complicatetd and too crappy. Yesterday I finally got the right idea: I bought some pvc pipes, 3 cans of foam and a buzz saw blade for my dremel and tried it a second time. I cut the pipe in short parts and glued it together with hot glue to a form and covered it with a lot of foam. Then I carved a little bit and yes, I got it! Yeah, I was really happy to have managed it. And this was my very first carving expirience with expanding foam. You will see, I'm very excited about this stuff!
I covered it with a lot of newspaper to save the foam inside, because I was so afraid that it would break. This made it very solid and durable and the finishing layer of paper machè helped not only at the modeling part.
With a lot of sanding and after many hours I got a flat and smooth looking surface of the horse head. Now I used a barken look for it. So I took my dremel and made a lot of long, deep lines into the paper machè with it. The surface looked totally scratched and chaotic, but it really hit the spot. After that I asked my boyfriend to paint it. He is very talented and gave my work a beautiful artistic look.
And what should I say? He did an awesome job!
You see, the paint is almost done. I also put the antler into the head. For this I made some holes in the front of the head, filles these with some expanding foam and sticked the blank PvP pipes of the antlers into the holes. Some hot glue and paper machè helped to fix it firm enough.
So, the head part was finished and I had to work at the hoov.
This is a picture of some steps later, but I wanted to share the work of the hoov and the head.
Building the hoov was not very complicated. I formed a cone with greyboard, put my staff into it and filled it with expanding foam. I cutted the buttom to the right angle, covered it with a greyboard pard and modeled and fixed everything with paper machè. Milling of a wooden texture (for looking like bark) and runes followed. Then my boyfriend used acrylic (brown, bronze and blue) color for painting. At last I covered it with a silk gloss paint.
Now some words about the transport of my staff:
You maybe are curios how I transported it or put it into a car. The answer is, that it consists of three single parts. The head, the hoov and the middle section. I bought a wooden staff in the home office, let them cut it appart and visited a craftsman for drilling them. To put them togehter again, I spinned the botls in the picture into the wood and... finished!
Now I can split them and put them togehter whenever I want.
Yeah... my staff was done and it was a great feeling after 4 months of work!
So here are some pictures:
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