Part 2: Pteranodons / Maquette

Ranger Rick's design director, Donna Miller, chose sketch #3 from the thumbnails I showed yesterday, and she had the inspired idea to flop the design so that the Pteranodon faced right.

Meanwhile I had been doing lots of research. I looked at photos of fossils and reconstructions of skeletons (both drawings and sculptures). I also studied lots of photos and videos of modern aquatic birds to learn how they take off, land, and hunt. 

Next I needed to build a quick maquette to see how the forms looked in 3D.

I started with a skeleton out of aluminum armature wire,  matching the size of all the parts to scale drawings. Then I bulked out the body parts with Fimo Effect polymer clay. I've found this kind of oven-hardening clay has a bit more flexibility after it cures in the oven compared to other brands.

For the wing membrane I used the Tyvek material from a FedEx envelope. Tyvek is much stronger than paper, and less prone to wrinkling. I ran a very thin wire along the back edge of the wing to hold it in position. Everything was glued with a hot melt glue gun. Then I sprayed the whole assembly outdoors with gray spray-on primer, and painted it with acrylic paint

Where I needed a little more specularity on the beak and head, I painted some gloss medium. Now I had a reference tool with posable wings that I could take outdoors into real sunlight to study the effects of light and shade.

Every photo was full of little surprises. For example, who would have thought of the cast shadow of that cranial process on the far wing?

Tomorrow I'll show how the final painting went together.

-----

Ranger Rick October issue

The Pteranodon series:
Part 1: Pteranodons / Thumbnails
Part 2: Pteranodons / Maquette
Part 3: Pteranodons / Step by Step