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So, I got an almost brand new, black primed rhino the other day, no top hatch, no cupolas, but loads of ideas. One of which, is to add a wolf/bear pelt hanging on the right hand door, and to make it look a little more space wolfy than just glueing some symbols on.

The only problem I have is that I haven't a clue how to sculpt a wolf/bear pelt. I've tried searching for free templates (I can't find any, only the press templates for termie shoulder drapes) and I've tried drawing out templates on paper, but nothing come out the right size or shape. I was hoping someone on dakka might have done something similar and would be willing to share their secrets for sculpting them? I know how to do fur (see my Vostroyan scions for proof) I just need to get the damnable shape right.

Many hanks to any and all who comment,

LazzurusMan

Fur is pretty easy to sculpt. Here's a guide on how to do a fur mould, but really it's so quick and easy to do I wouldn't bother with a mould.

http://fromthewarp.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/how-to-sculpt-and-mold-fur-cloaks-and.html

Basically you just to back and forth slashes in to the greenstuff, the angle of the slashes determines how much the fur "strands" taper, the length of the slashes determines the length of the "strands". You can make the strands more ordered or you can just randomly do slashes to get something that looks like matted fur.

When you get to the edges, it's not covered in that tutorial, but I lift up the edges and put a few slashes on the opposite side to give a look similar to how GW does a lot of their furs on Space Wolf models.

I can sculpt fur, I just need a template to get the shape of a draped fur pelt correct. Thanks anyway, I'd lost that link!

Oh my mistake, I usually just roughly smoosh out the shape I want, lol. Because it's going to have fur sculpted on it it doesn't matter too much if you have add or cut away from it like a regular cape.

Not so easy with milliput! I've tried cutting the shape out of a flattened lump of milliput, but It tore to shreds when I tried to peel it from my desk, even then, the limbs were way too long.

If you're going to make a few then just look up some rugs/skins on Google images/eBay copy paste and resize into a word document multiple times, print it off then laminate. You'll end up with a sheet that you can work on and get wet.
This could work for all sorts of things.
Also I'd suggest greenstuff over milliput every day.
It's far les likely to tear and is with investing in.

How does this look?

It looks fine but... why there?

Easiest place to put it, placing it anywhere that wouldn't block an exit point would have required more work to make it look right. I have also seen someone elses SW rhino with a pelt there and it looked fine.

The pelt itself looks fine but yeah, blocking the exit is weird.

I probably would have tried to drape it loosely on areas, like around the exhaust covers (the lower portion, not the upper portion where hot air is escaping). For tightly bolted down pelts like you've done, I probably would have done it only on the door itself (not OVER the door) but even that would be a bit odd as it would get driven in to the ground when the door opens. Maybe you could do a tight pelt like that over one of the top doors (just one side so the hatch still opens).

Well there's a bit of backstory to the vehicle. The driver maintains a superstition from his tribe on Fenris that a vehicle with a carved pendant will not be lost, and as the pendant is draped on the left, nobody must leave the vehicle on the right. A little odd I know, but at the time it was the easiest place to add the pelt. It was also sculpted on the vehicle itself, and not draped on.

Ah ok, that's cool! If there's some nice background as to why that door doesn't open that looks good.

Personally, after sculpting the bulk of it like you have there, I'd run my sculpting tool along the edges to lift them up slightly and then sculpt some fur on the raised edges just to give it a bit of depth. Then on the "paws" I'd put little balls of putty and press them down slightly so it looks like it's been riveted/nailed/bolted to the side of the tank at the paws.

Little details like that can make it look a bit more real.

Otherwise it looks good, my points are just nitpicking ideas for you to think about for future furs on tanks

I have put two rivet like pits of milliput on the top paws

 LazzurusMan wrote:
Not so easy with milliput! I've tried cutting the shape out of a flattened lump of milliput, but It tore to shreds when I tried to peel it from my desk, even then, the limbs were way too long.

I'm a bit late here, but for future ref I've used a couple of tips from Milliput's old site (long since gone): allow the milliput to sit for a while, to become more firm. Roll it out on a flat surface, using talc to prevent sticking. Roll and fold it in the same direction to align the polymer chains and make it a bit tougher still. If you want to drape it over a mini in curls and folds, let it cure to 'leather hardness'. (flexible and resistant to accidental marks, like leather, but still workable) At that stage it'll be difficult to stick to anything without pressing it down hard at the connection points, but detail there can be resculpted afterwards, or just use good ol' glue to restick it.

This is - admittedly - my only attempt so far. There are a couple of different putties in the mix, but it's mostly milliput yellow-grey.

http://www.cheddarmongers.org/prod/pic/Vermis/Historical/Eorl02.jpg.html

 LazzurusMan wrote:
How does this look?

Texture looks fine, but the proportions look a bit off. Whether wolf or bear (deciding between them will be helpful), there's too much limb and not enough torso. Bear limbs should be much shorter and wolf limbs much skinnier. The torso, as well as providing the bulk of the length, is also extra wide in a pelt, being that the whole circumference of the animal gets "unrolled" when laid out flat. A Google image search for bear/wolf pelts should net more than enough examples, if not actual templates, for you to extrapolate the rough shape. Leather suppliers often carry hair-on hides, as well - might be able to find some top-down images from one of them that you could scale and trace to make your own pattern, although I imagine bear and wolf are less likely to be commercially available than cow, deer, rabbit, etc.

Could be a Rhino for the much feared, Emperor's Space Sloths...

More helpful...wolf is pretty easy to find, as are bear (especially in the form of bear skin rugs).

If you go to some old school furrier books, you can see plenty of drawings (and some pictures) of the process needed to remove a pelt from the animal - where the cuts get made and how they stretch it to tan the hide (fur on or off...). It is a trade that is old enough that you can probably find some freely available through things like Google Books.