Hellhound Sculpture- Completed

[* Terri *]

If I can make a suggestion, definitly use real fur, and if you want to have a small boney ridge down the spine, make it out of polymer clay.  That way you can make it look however you want and you won't have to worry about size.    You could do the same for small spike horns.  Make sure the eyes you use are large and if possible a golden color.   The pups could get into some more advanced taxidermy, depending on their size.  You may have to cast your own form or learn to wrap one.  I'd suggest a little more research, before you get any supplies.

If you want to make a couple of these for yourself, they would look nice playing with bones near their mother in your display.  Just a thought. 

You were worried about the adult not standing on her own.  If you make a knarled tree trunk standing behind her, on your display, you can attach her to it with long screws.  And if you're going to sculpt a tree trunk, don't forget to add skelatal faces in it's bark.  It's what I'd do if it were me.   Good luck.

[Uncle Harley]

yeah i agree with not using faux fur... you will find it will be harder to do then using real fur... Trust me been there done that.

And to determine the price you want take your materials... and what you want to make per hour...

Like this

Materials - 175$

Dollars per hour- 50$     
Hours needed- 10

you get 675$ if u take 10 hours and want 50$ an hour. Of course you can make that more or less ect ect.

Great advice if you want her to go broke. If she needs $50 an hour wage then she better charge 50 +  overhead and profit averaged into an hourly rate.

[Krysta (Knuxtiger4)]

Yeah still trying to figure out an hourly wage thing, I would go with my current pay I get at work, but that's not enough.   I was think in the range of $10 to $20 an hour, depending on what size of the creature in question.  If I remember right, I think my small creature I did, Diesel was rough 3 hours of work maybe and he's about the size of a opossum.

I mean this person isn't sure yet right now, but I'm at least preparing if someone ever does want something.

As of animatronics, a lot of people have told me I should to really scare people, sadly I have no clue how to, but one day.... she will be moving, maybe. =)

[leopardpaws]

10$ an hour.... don't do that! Your doing something that no one else is making so people will pay for it.  Alot of the people laugh at me on here for making plushies... But i am making 45$ an hour and its a cushy job And i am full time. Sooo they can laugh at me all they want , If you have a broad enough audience you can sell these! i am going to start going to fairs and selling this summer, That will be interesting.  Knuxtiger i got some cool ideas for ya if you have yahoo or aim or somthing.

Aim: iknomyabcdsn123s
yahoo: xojenniexo08@yahoo.com

[Krysta (Knuxtiger4)]

10$ an hour.... don't do that! Your doing something that no one else is making so people will pay for it.  Alot of the people laugh at me on here for making plushies... But i am making 45$ an hour and its a cushy job And i am full time. Sooo they can laugh at me all they want , If you have a broad enough audience you can sell these! i am going to start going to fairs and selling this summer, That will be interesting.  Knuxtiger i got some cool ideas for ya if you have yahoo or aim or somthing.

Aim: iknomyabcdsn123s
yahoo: xojenniexo08@yahoo.com

Damn that's good.  And yes, I'll PM my AIM user name, I'm on too much.

[ivywolf]

I'm late seeing the finished product, but glad I came back to check! It came out great! If you ever do get the chance to make a male, I'd love to see him. I'm a gore hound to the bone, for sure. Although, I would actually like to see you do regular taxidermy mounts, as well. I think you could do them really well. You have far more patience than I do. I try skinning, get fed up and end up with just the skull/bones. lol!

[Krysta (Knuxtiger4)]

I'm late seeing the finished product, but glad I came back to check! It came out great! If you ever do get the chance to make a male, I'd love to see him. I'm a gore hound to the bone, for sure. Although, I would actually like to see you do regular taxidermy mounts, as well. I think you could do them really well. You have far more patience than I do. I try skinning, get fed up and end up with just the skull/bones. lol!

Well as of right now I want to mount a weasel as a non rogue taxidermy piece and then I would use another to make a quick rogue taxidermy one to sell and a last one for something else planned.  I want to try to mount small animals for now because of I'm trying to save money right now.  I'm still looking into prices right now but hopefully in a few months I'll get to one.

I also realized I have a lot of foam broad laying around so I'm planning to construct a poseable body for a hellpuppie for those that are interested.

Also need to adjust the skin on Mirage, realized that the dark fur is on one side, so that's another quick project to do is to fix that problem.

[Schrecken]

IMO there's nothing wrong with using faux fur for certain things (BTW the hellhound came out great - I like the glowing head!) - it all depends on how much control you need over the finished product and if it's something you may want or need to replicate as close as possible.  I use faux fur all the time on my faux mounts because I have to get a certain look each and every time and I don't have much control with real fur.  Real animal fur varies tremendously (consider the work that goes into matching or dying pelts to make a coat, for instance) and since I make production items that have to look nearly the same (unless the customer requests otherwise) I want the same fur to come off the same roll I buy from the same company each and every time.

If you are making one of a kind items like the hellhound this won't be much of an issue, though.   But if you need to control the exact look and quality each and every time for every piece, faux fur would be your best bet.   Either that or you have to warn your customers to expect certain degrees of variation between each piece.

[Krysta (Knuxtiger4)]

IMO there's nothing wrong with using faux fur for certain things (BTW the hellhound came out great - I like the glowing head!) - it all depends on how much control you need over the finished product and if it's something you may want or need to replicate as close as possible.  I use faux fur all the time on my faux mounts because I have to get a certain look each and every time and I don't have much control with real fur.  Real animal fur varies tremendously (consider the work that goes into matching or dying pelts to make a coat, for instance) and since I make production items that have to look nearly the same (unless the customer requests otherwise) I want the same fur to come off the same roll I buy from the same company each and every time.

If you are making one of a kind items like the hellhound this won't be much of an issue, though.   But if you need to control the exact look and quality each and every time for every piece, faux fur would be your best bet.   Either that or you have to warn your customers to expect certain degrees of variation between each piece.

Thank you for the advise Schrecken.  I have to say that you are really great with faux fur, best I've seen.    And thank you for comment about the hound.

As of right now, going to make a faux fur hellpuppy as a test.  I bought enough faux fur from the craft store to make two males.  I know there are company who make amazing faux fur but the only thing is it is expensive for just a yard of it plus the shipping, it tend to get crazy, thus I'm limited to whatever the craft store has.  They did tell me they will get more faux fur colors coming in around Halloween so I'm hoping to get some brown fur as well.  And I believe people understand that if they want the hounds made of really fur that some will be different from the others, but I'll be sure to mention it.  As of right now, the people who are interested want faux fur because they want to be able to afford one.  I estimated it who cost them around $125 to $130 for one with faux fur, while one made of possible rabbit fur or something else would be $150+.

I know I need to learn more stuff with faux fur.  I tried airbrush dye of  the faux fur to get purple fur with poor results.  This was back when I finished my senior project which was making a lifesize version of my creature.

[Schrecken]

I had some decent results with dying white faux fur for a customer who requested a fantasy animal that had magenta and lavender fur (I was able to buy some colored furs but nothing that matched the customer's artwork so I had to do some dyeing) - some faux furs take more readily to dye and others don't.  If you PM me I can give you some more pointers on dying faux fur and what sorts of furs to look for that are most likely to take dyes the best.

[Clawed]

I have to say - this is STUNNING, and I don't say that very often. I absolutely LOVE THIS. Love it. LOVE. IT. Do you even realize how much money you could make doing commissions like this?? It's inspiring... fantastic...! I read every post; it was great to see the progress. I cannot express how much I love this in words. I just want to give her a big hug!!

[Krysta (Knuxtiger4)]

Schrecken, sent you a PM.

Asta, thank you. =)  It would be nice to try to make another hound but I told a few people about the cost to make and that they would have to pick it up if they wanted one because it would be outrageous to ship a hellhound unless they were asking for smaller versions, which I'm right now planning to make one soon.

I'm still on the fence about showing what a hellpuppy will look like when I get it done.

[Clawed]

I would love to see a hellpuppy!

True about the shipping - what if you just shipped the pelt with everything attached so they could fit it on a mount themselves? That'd probably be even more trouble, though.

[Wolfwoman]

I would love to see a hellpuppy!

True about the shipping - what if you just shipped the pelt with everything attached so they could fit it on a mount themselves? That'd probably be even more trouble, though.

Taxidermy just doesn't work that way, if it did, why would taxidermists mount anything for people?

[Krysta (Knuxtiger4)]

I would love to see a hellpuppy!

True about the shipping - what if you just shipped the pelt with everything attached so they could fit it on a mount themselves? That'd probably be even more trouble, though.

Taxidermy just doesn't work that way, if it did, why would taxidermists mount anything for people?

Exactly, even myself found it hard to mount the pelt when I did it, probably because it was my first time really    But I guess I did good.  But I do agree Wolfwomen, plus that people that would buy them, probably don't know the proper steps in mounting a pelt.

Its easier for me to send them a sized down one.