Paul's Blue Dinosaur

For a long time, I was trying to find a simple way to make a sculpture you can change a little, like a toy or something. I had come up with an idea on how to at least change the expression on a sculpt and since Paul's birthday was coming up, I decided to use the occasion for a little experiment. This blue dinosaur was the result!








I picked a dinosaur because I knew it wouldn't take me long to sculpt a brontosaurus ( or apatosaur if you new-schoolers prefer). The part that was gonna hold me up was the design of the moving parts to make his eyes change expression.






Another reason for picking a dinosaur was the fact that I could disguise the knob that moves the eyes as one of his scales. Below are pics of how his eyes change as you turn the knob!

I thought about painting the pupils on the little eyeballs themselves, but leaving the pupils independent of the eyeballs gives you more combinations and thus a greater number of expressions. This worked to a certain point, which I expected. Remember, this was an experiment for something else I have in mind later. But in the meantime- Paul got a pretty cool toy!

When I first start to sand my sculpts, I usually start with some pretty course sandpaper and then move on to the finer stuff when it gets smooth enough. On this sculpt, I just left the course sandpaper's scrapes and ruts because I knew when I painted him, those scrapes would look like skin! It worked.

Some sketches I did before I started working on the actual sculpt. I wanted him to have tiny toes and feet like the dinosaurs did in that old Tex Avery cartoon! His bottom jaw is inspired from Elliot of "Pete's Dragon".

Here's a video-clip!

The weeds and grass are just painted wire. The little river bed he's on is a wooden plaque you can buy at an arts'n'crafts store. I sculpted a little ridge of land to give it some character.

"Not another one...!"