Adding Fullness After Mounting

For one , the manikin or form should have all your details and muscles built in from the get if not u can use some clay when mounting . If you still need to fill in you can use caulk but I prefer pro 1 hide paste, but try to avoid that ahead of time by having your form/body correctly detailed to begin with.

 

Let your clay harden up a bit if you are just pushing and distorting it.
When you skin things out, whether it is a deer, squirrel or whatever. Start taking notes of exactly how much muscle and tissue there is around eyes, ears or anywhere that is going to need to be rebuilt, minus the actual skin obviously. I don’t think that enough emphasis goes into the study of the carcass. Just my two cents.

 

I had the same problem with deer eyes. The wet clay always got messed up while pulling on the cape no matter how careful I was so I have started using clayshay to do my modeling and let it harden before applying the skin. If you need tucking slots for the skin put them in while the clay is still soft. Also caulk is used a lot inside the head area of birds so should work for mammals

 

First off it starts with your blue print of making the right markings and or measurements for either your carvings or wrapping the bodies.
Next is how thin are your hides , face etc.
When using DP it’s actually a must to get them thinned down to slow the shrinkage.
So saying this you need to : work on the right measurements and getting those skins thinned enough down. This also goes for tanned skins as well. Tanned skin gives more room for error and things are easier to fix.

 

Retain your carcass after you skin. Take the time to either sketch or photograph the carcass. Print out the photo and take multiple measurements, mark them on your photo, especially where your having issues so you have a baseline size to go by as you make your manakins. Remember that you have to take into account the carcass is limp and has no blood pressure expanding the muscles back to their original size. Dry preserve is all well and good but I believe you will find you will like tanned skins much more because of the stretch you can get. Either way, like Frank said, you need to thin appropriately to control that shrinkage. Krowtann works great for small mammals and is easy to use.