Measuring and making bodies - Tutorial

So with the post yesterday about who makes the best bodies and some recent questions on measurements, i thought I would share my process. I am working on an exotic pheasant and a normal pheasant body is too small. Here is a photo of my carcass, a normal sized pheasant body, and a Brandt body I had sitting around. I used the Brandt body for this project. It's just a chunk of foam....so lets start cutting.



I measure body length first and cut the foam to length.



Now for width.



And depth.



At this point I have a squarish block the same size as the carcass. Time to start shaping. I drew a center line down the body and started to round things off to the center line.



Now for the wings.....measure from socket to socket to get width.


Transfer the measurements to the manikin. Now measure how far back the wings need to sit from the front corner of the body.


Now measure how far down from the shoulder they sit and transfer the measurement.


You now have a 3 point measurement for wing location. Should be right.

Lets move to the hips. In this case I left all the leg bones together to the hip. If you dont use the hip bone, simply measure it's length with the calipers and from the hip joint location, transfer the length to the manikin. That will show you where to place the leg bone. I usually do 3 marks (forward, center, and back) from the hip for the hip bone and create an "arc" with this measurement so that I can adjust per the pose and get the location right.

Measure from the wing socket to the hip socket.


Now how far down are the hips.


Lastly, measure from hip socket to hip socket to get the width. (forgot to photo that) you now have a 3 point measurement on the hips....should be right.

Now for the neck.....width.


And depth from the front corner of the shoulder.


Depth of the clavicle measurement.


Manikin with measurements transferred.


Measure neck length and width and create your neck.


Here it is...almost done.



And finally, add legs.


A few key things here......I ALWAYS keep the carcass until I can take these measurements and shape and size the manikin.
The bone sockets that are referenced for measurements dont move, so you can get an accurate replication.
Your triangulating both the wing and hip locations by using this procedure. Cant go wrong.
If you keep the hip bones, you can stand these up and check for balance and adjust the legs however you want and it will always be in the correct spot anatomically.

Lastly, for a standing bird (waterfowl), you need to remove some of the manikin so that the wings sit close to the body. I typically draw a line from the bottom of the wing socket location to the top of the hip socket location. I make a slice with a knife along that line from socket to socket. Then I find my width marks for the wing sockets and slice that back to the hip socket. remove that "triangle" of foam ad now your wings should sit nicely against the manikin.

Hope this helps someone.

 

That is exactly what I use.