The Pegasus Project Part III

Heads ahoy!

Generally the most important part of a model, (or any animal scupture), is the head and eyes. It sets the mood for everything else to come. If a horse is spooking with nostrils aflarin' and wild eyes bugging out of their head, it's body will generally follow suit with a rigid "ready to leave" position. If he's being a laid back ol' plug in a field with some lazy flopped over ears and a dozing sleepy eye, you can bet the hind leg will be cocked and the body will be in an uber-relaxed position. It all begins with the head and eye to set a mood for what you want to do with something.

I'll be the first one to admit that I absolutely adore a good wild and wooly "out-of-control" horse sculpture. One that is freaking out and bolting off into orbit. But, the pegasus is at home in the clouds and he knows he is an immortal being protected by the gods. So he really has no reason to freak out about anything. He's proven himself to be a brave soul flying into battle against the kracken, so if that didn't rile him up - not much else would.
As you can see above, I've split the head into different parts. Tekes have a narrow overall body profile, and most american breeds have a rounder and more thicker appearance throughout. The NSH mold is a fairly beefy mold, and almost every inch of it will have to be slimmed down.

I started by taking out two swaths of the head to shrink the skull up a bit. You can see that the original mold had two different sizes of eyes. Most folks really don't pay much attention to models when they buy them in the store, but 90% of the time the eyes won't match up. One is generally bigger than the other due to the casting process. When you disect models down into smaller parts, these things become clearly apparent.
Frankensteed. After taking out a chunk along the skull line and underneath the jaw, the head is ready to be put back together. As you can see, the smaller eye and the veins are not level - one side is slightly lower than the other. When a model that exhibits a turned head is cast, sometimes one side deflates and the other side remains normal and puffed out. It happens, and there is generally nothing that a caster can do about it. (After all, Breyer models are a mass produced product.) But you can see that the cheek bone and jaw bones on the right side are puffed out, and the left side is flat. This will get fixed.
"The horror......the horror....." Marlon Brando's infamous whispered words leave a lasting impression when you're working with mangled chopped-up plastics. In order to do new eyes, the old ones have to go. The nose and ears have been chucked into the garbage can as well.
Bird brain anyone? Things get funky when you're playing around with anatomy. He looks more like a crow at this point. There might be more to the Turkmen belief that their horses were as swift as eagles after all.....
The shoulders are next. The same principle as the head will follow. He'll be going on an ultra-slimfast diet.
-Shannon.