Carousel Project Part 6- First View Animals on the Carousel

First time on the carousel.

I have completed the basic part of the armature for all four menagerie animals.  I placed them on the carousel to determine whether I had room to add another animal or two.  As it turns out, I will not have enough room.  I could possibly squeeze in one more animal, but it would appear crowded, especially when you consider that there will also be some sort of central column that supports the roof of the carousel.  This means that the first part of this project, the basic armatures for the menagerie animals, is complete and it is time to move to the next phase.

Adding layers of foil to pad the figure.

Muscle masses added.

The next segment of the project is to add some muscle structure to the animals and to get rid of some of the sharp edges created by the poster board and toothpicks.  I started with the camel, because I consider it one of the bigger challenges of this project.  Because of the small size of the animals, I am using only aluminum foil to create the muscles groups.  The first picture of the camel shows how I tape on layers of foil.  I keep adding bits and layers until I have something that looks right.  When finished, the foil is completely covered with tape, which will be a better base for the paper mache' that is to follow.  The final picture is the base layer of the armature so that you can compare how much shape has been added to the camel.

This layering is a slow process.  It took a day and a half to complete the camel.  All of the hard edges have not been completely softened.  However, they will soften some more with each layer of paper mache' that is added.  I have just started to work on the giraffe.  I expect that it will take the better part of a week to get all the animals finished.  I doubt that I will have as much time in the coming week to work on them.

Base layer of the armature.

I am looking forward to getting the paper mache' on all the animals so I can start painting and adding design elements.  It is rather hard to keep looking at the same manilla tape color day after day.  It was really tempting to just do one animal from start to finish before working on the others, but it would have been a waste of resources.  I will use less flour paste and paint by working on all the animals at the same time.