Polar Bear

Arms and Chin

Today was a good day. The weather cooperated so I was able to finish fiberglassing the bear’s chin. And behold! A video to prove it. While the fiberglass was kicking, I worked on the bear’s arms. It took me a little while to figure out exactly how I wanted the gusset under the arm to […]

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The lower jaw

I did the next layer of fiberglass on the lower jaw of the bear today. Sorry, no photos but tomorrow, I should have a video for you. I’ll be heading in to the studio to finish up the arms and to saw the jaw apart. Because I need it to be a completely enclosed thing,

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Reboned

Important note: The staff at the Virka fabric store speak no English. I don’t know the words for sewing machine, needle, elastic, boning, nylon strapping, or buckle. Fortunately, the lady helping me was very nice and willing to listen to my half-Icelandic, half-point and grunt. She made very good guesses and she spoke slowly when

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One percent

For the fiberglass resin I’m using, I have to use 99% resin to 1% hardener. At the moment, I’m having to face the bitter truth that I mis-judged the amount of hardener and didn’t put enough in. This means that the fiberglass I just put on the bear’s face is remaining a gooey, toxic mess.

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Patterning

I disassembled the body today and made patterns. Once I had the basic pattern made, I folded the paper in half, trimmed it to make it symetrical. With the clean, tidy pattern, I cut the cloth and stitched it together. I also started installing the boning today.

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The body and boning

To make the body, I started by creating a fullsize mockup of the bear’s torso. Next, I covered the form in cloth and established the basic fit. In this photo, I’m attaching the boning. Because I am making a pattern of the bear, I’ll pin everything into place, then label each piece of boning and

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Prepping for fiberglass

Unfortunately, the battery on my camera died so I don’t have very many pictures of this part of the process. I first removed the lower jaw and then carved out an upper and lower palate for the bear. While I’ll fiberglass all of it, I’ll wind up cutting some away later giving the bear a

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Life cast

I’m building a polar bear costume for a childrens’ hospital here, and for the head, needed a life cast of someone’s face to build on. Back in Portland, I have several life casts of different people that I sculpt on when I’m making a mask. Wigforms are lovely things for wigs, but they are not

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