Face Details: Teeth, Lips, Eyes (long post)

The last couple days I’ve been working on finishing finer details on Rocky’s face. The quick mockup I published earlier wasn’t bad, but I noticed a couple of things.
First and foremost, Rocket J Squirrel does not have a significant cleft in his upper lip; in all the original cartoons its almost always a smooth line at the center. This means the previous pinned-out smile had to go. I set out to better balance his teeth and lips to the original line art and then did some more work on his eyes.

Teeth

I lots of 2mm white craft foam sheets, so I laminated a triple set together to make these initial “stunt” teeth I’ve used in previous pictures. Once I realized I might have to make new ones anyway, I decided to make them twice as thick (6 layers) but as two 3-layer individual teeth then glued to another 3-layer base — with a black line down the center of the base piece to highlight them.

I have tons of this white 2mm craft foam

Adding the Lips and Teeth to the Head

I previously mentioned I made my braid by stripping the core out of some 3/16 parachute cord and stitching down its center. To create the lines for Rocky’s upper lips, I first folded it in the center and stitched that again a bit over an inch to make sure it would stay flat and straight, then spread the two trailing ends. I used more contact cement to bind the foam teeth to the braid (you can see the glue curing on the last photo in the above section)

After a couple false starts on Friday, Saturday morning I unstitched that work. I used liquid bandage to seal the ends of the braid and trimmed it (like using Fray check), carfefully pinned the new lip line in place, then used invisible smoke-colored monofilament to stitch the braid and teeth in place.

The center of the braid, stitched, and with contact cement curing to bond to the teeth.

Jeepers Peepers — working on the eyes

I have to be able to see out of the head (I’ve established I can see well, but will NOT have binocular vision because of the width of the snout between the eyes) and am using a screen material to fill the eyeholes. Some fursuiters use buckram, but I chose instead to use the black polymer screening used for rollup sun shades. It has the advantage that it won’t melt if it gets wet 🙂

I first spray painted one side of a piece of the screen with white plastic primer and set it aside to cure. I then took some card stock, placed it inside the head and traced the actual eyeholes, marking where the concave joint for the snout was. tracing over those templates, I used plain paper to create masters for the pupils and did a quick visual check of them inside the head. (Rocky was always drawn with black pupils, no colored iris.)

I laid the screen over my masters, cut masks of Frog Tape for the “reflections”, stuck them on the screen, then carefully painted the pupils to match.