Ludo: Work in Progress

Almost there!!!

Just a bit more fur to apply! Once I've completed his second layer of fur, I will do whatever clean up work needs to be done and a little bit of paint. I am hoping to have him done tomorrow.

I am now accepting enquiries for Ludo. If you are interested in purchasing him, please contact me.

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***Updated 10 September 2010 

Reaching the home stretch on Ludo! His horns and fangs have been sculpted and cured. I've painted his horns and his fangs will be painted later.

I am still building out his flesh to get his body just right. I've also worked on his facial structure and features once his fangs were set.

 

His horns have been placed and I will continue building out his neck and back. Once this is done, I will start applying his fur.

 

I have painted and distressed a wooden base. It is done in layers of green, silver, iridescent white, burnt umber and terra cotta. Layers were painted, sanded and distressed, then covered in a satin varnish. There is a felt backing. The plaque is artist grade plastic that was hand drawn in archival ink and gel pen and coloured in pencil. I am still deciding how I am going to attach the plaque and Ludo.

More to come soon!

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***Updated 4 September 2010

 In the last 24 hours I have got a lot done on Ludo! Here is where he is at as I write this (above). 

To construct his hands, first I made a palm out of a plain NZ Corriedale wool. I then rolled out three fingers in the blend I have created for Ludo (brown, nutmeg and grey).

 

Once the fingers are felted and firm, I attached them to the palm.

 

 I then add  the skin colour to blend everything.

 

Completed hand on left. 

Once his hands were done, I got to work on the feet. I started by building on the foundation layer.

Completed feet with toes added.

With his feet on, I could then add Ludo's "skin".

 

His entire body has to be covered in this blend to make his colouration uniform. Here I am adding a bit more to flesh out his belly.

 

I have just attached the head and am connecting and felting it permanently to his body.

 

More to come!!!!

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"Hello!!!"

After a long hiatus due to computer issues, I have begun work on Ludo once again. I am so pleased to get back to this sweet ol' beast! My new laptop has a nifty program where I can snip bits of my screen and I spent a good part of the morning watching Labyrinth and taking the best poses of Ludo to help me in his fabrication.

This morning this as far as I had gotten (above). His head was mostly done and his body had only started to take shape. I spent lots of time studying his body shape and movements and started to flesh him out.

 

Ludo has a very unique body shape and I want to stay true to the original. His core is New Zealand Corriedale wool. 

 

He is shaping up very nicely! Once I have his core felted and shaped up the way I want, I will construct his hands and feet right onto the armature in the colour I have blended for his body. Then I will cover his body in that blend to make his colouration consistent.

***Updated 3 September 2010

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I have been working on Ludo over the last few days. I'm very excited to finally start on the lovable beast from Labyrinth. A few days ago, I created his head. I first started with the general shape of his head and set his eyes.  I decided to go with a blend of wools to get his colouration as close to the original as possible. I don't have hand carders so I just pull all of the colours by hand until they are satisfactorily blended.  I am using a blend of grey and brown merino with nutmeg New Zealand Corriedale wools.

I spent a good while watching Labyrinth, freezing the frames to get different angles of him and did a few rough sketches for proportion and to get a better feel of his shape. I'm very fussy about scale. I want all of my recreations to be as true to the original as possible.

Here is a shot of me adding on his upper lip. Basically felting is just building shapes on top of shapes and joining them. I consider it to be closest to pottery or sculpting in clay which is something I enjoyed very much in high school (it was my favourite class!). You build a foundation shape, then felt on the next bit and so on and so forth. Sometimes I felt the next piece I want on first, other times I just do it freehand as in the case above.

Mostly finished head! His brow still needs to be defined more and he is of course missing his horns, ears and fangs but they will be added at a later date. I decided to sculpt his fangs as well as his horns out of paperclay which is a really great medium. It is a paper based clay that air dries (no need to bake) and is very hard when cured. The best part is it is extremely lightweight so it won't weigh down my very light felt creations.

His armature was made today and I started wrapping and felting the core wool onto his frame. Should be a day or so and I will have a body to show you.

Until next time...