Muscle and skin for the spaniel

The spaniel’s name, by the way, is Lady.

I use quarter inch “crap” foam to put muscle on her skull. We call it crap foam to distinguish it from reticulated foam, which is strong and durable. Crap foam tears easily, oxidizes quickly, but is very lightweight and cheap. It’s also fairly stretchy. Lady doesn’t need a long life-span, and the stretchy property is a useful one. So is the dirt-cheap aspect.

The “muscle” I’m installing helps keep the jaw attached to the head. The layers of it provide more realistic motion than large sculpted pieces would.

Once the jaw is in place, I install the eyes. I only did it in this order because I was worried about dropping glue on the eyes. Later I had to put tape over them to do some painting, so that was a silly concern.

Remember those plywood legs? I used polyethylene planks to round them out to make “bones” and muscles. It’s the same stuff as I used on her spine.

And here’s what she looks like trimmed and muscled.

I used spandex to make a sort of pajama suit of skin for her.

With the skin in place, I paint it dark brown in all the places she’ll get brown fur. You’ll notice that the skin is not covering her whole body, and is mostly in the areas where the brown fur goes. That’s because in order to get the right color and texture for the fur, I had to go with human hair extensions. I need the skin in order to attach that. Her white fur will be a goat hide, and I’ll be able to use the natural leather backing.