Putting a Lid On It

Horns were textured with featherlight spackle and grooved with the edge of wire mesh. Color was added to lips and cheeks, etc. although the pink will ultimately be toned-down with transparent flesh color later.

Eyes were surprisingly made of large glass pearl beads. Rana represents wisdom so it could be said her eyes should be pearls of wisdom. Lower left, you can see the first set of lashes from fabric (these were later cut off and replaced with natural goat hair to match the fur covering her legs, shown in an upcoming post.)

The edges of her mouth, eyes, where the ears meet the head, and lash line were coated with Fray Check elastic glue which allows them to be animated without cracking or tearing the paper skin. It's a wonder.

Eye lids were made from thin skins of foam glued onto wire rings. These were completely coated with the Fray Check to make repeatedly flexible and to smooth out the cells of the foam texture. The bottom wire edge gets pushed up to open the eyes, and pulled down to close them. I never saw Rana asleep before this development. It's going to look GREAT when she's cuddled up in her bed at night!!

This morning I added some wittle widdle teefs, just four of them, to the upper palate. They were sculpted from rigid air dry clay and ended up having the sweetest little space between the two in front. I never thought Rana's teeth ever needed to show, she doesn't speak, and her range of expression should be subtle and calm. But I'm glad I put them in so that should an angle occur during filming, getting all up in her grill as it were, there'll be a bit of toofus.

Her tongue gets positioned via the employment of cushioned tweezers. Upper right, is today's progress on the new goat hair lashes.