So here we have the before and after pic from my last post, in which I talked about deblobbinating the paw by repatterning it using "Frankensteining", a method using felt patches and temporary adhesive spray. Here I'll talk about deblobbinating by using inside supports.

As this paw is so much bigger than the wearer's hand, it was clear from the get go it would need some kind of internal support, as otherwise it would look like a weird bag hanging from the end of the wearer's arm. I had some faint hopes that I could just stuff it with fiberfill and use the lining to hold the fiberfill in place, but nope, too blobby. See above left. 

The next solution to present itself was stuffing the original foam hand (from which I made the pattern) inside the fabric one. Remember this guy? 

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 Nice thought but nope, doesn't fit. The wrist is narrower than most other parts of the hand, and squish as I might the foam fingers don't really fit through the fabric sleeve at the wrist. Plus, there's a lot of bitty details to line up and glue down, like tendons and knuckles, and I don't know how I'd see to maneuver a glue gun between the foam and fabric once one is stuffed in the other. There is also the very significant consideration that I would really not want to recreate the entire foam hand every time I made one of these. 

So.. next approach, two considerations... First, can I use only parts of the foam hand? What is the minimum amount of foam I can get away with to get the look I want? Second, since I can't stuff a finished foam hand into a finished fabric one, to what degree can I add foam as I sew up the hand and build the support as I go?

My first take on the  bare minimum. A foam "tube" to support the palm and back of the paw, and foam detail to add definition to the knuckles, tendons, and first joints.  

​ I removed the sleeve from the fabric paw so I could maneuver the foam inside, and held it all lightly together with temporary adhesive to get an idea of how it would work. (The palmar pad is missing, I know.. I hadn't added it onto this particular draft as I I was already pretty confident it worked. Pardon the little foam bitties.)

 And, ouch. The toes could easily bend uncomfortably backwards at the spot where the foam support in the first joint ended. I did not like this at all.

Here I've added foam that goes all the way to the tips of the fingers. 

More  views of the support piece with its additions. (The black thing is a patch of sorts, as I ripped a hole in that piece of foam in my zeal.)

Now that the support piece is that much more complicated, I need to be able to better see what I am doing while installing it.  I turned the fabric paw inside out, sprayed the support piece with temporary adhesive and laid the tops of the two parts against each other, tugging and fiddling to get everything lined up and in the right place.  The tube thing for the palm will flip into the correct position when the hand is turned right side out, though with some difficulty. That stupid piece of black foam that I used as a patch did not help. I've also added foam to support the toebeans here, as I'm curious to see how that will look. 

When I flipped the whole thing right side out again, I was much happier with how the fingers looked while moving, from above anyway. When viewed from the underside, the palm and fingers bunched and folded in some pretty odd ways. Time for more supports? I decided to try  adding some foam to the undersides of the fingers, in the process connecting the palm piece with the toebean pieces.  Also, putting the parts together as above allows me to line up and glue the top carefully before turning it right side out, but not the bottom. (I imagine I could do it the other way too, lining up the bottom but not the top, though the top being the more complicated piece it makes sense to do it that way.) How could I line both the top and the bottom parts up carefully before turning everything right side out? If I left one end of the foam tube open, I could lay the tops of fabric and foam together, line them up and glue them down, roll the fabric and foam over like a giant burrito, repeat with the bottom pieces, glue the ends of the foam tube together, then turn right side out. Viola!!

I also found that when the bottom of the finger was supported, the top didn't bend back as easily as it had before, so I could get away without foam all the way to the fingertips, just stuffing instead. 

The support that's actually in the finished draft. Look familiar? That's because it was one of the paws I made a tape pattern from, partially disassembled. 

Finally, I sewed the sleeve back on, using a ladder stitch as I had to sew on the "good" side (such as it is with felt) as opposed to the underside, as it was now very difficult to turn the paw inside out again. The spray adhesive complicated matters, as it wanted to collect on and knot up my thread and needle. I'm not sure if I'll be using the temporary adhesive for paws I plan on selling, so this may or may not be an issue.

Next, to make a pair of finished paws using this pattern, and actually offering them for sale! Stay tuned!

PS Fun fact!!  Trying to describe hand parts in this post made me go on a somewhat useless Internet search for the terms. I did find the term "Flagina", which supposedly is a name for the fold of skin between your thumb and forefinger. Hee hee!

Ah, such high hopes. Previously I'd posted about my glorious latest paw draft, shown above taped up and ready for patterning. And also above, the paw I sewed up from that pattern. You can see the one does not look anywhere near as good the other. The sewn up paw looks short, chunky and blobby.

Well, at least the underside looks pretty good, though I think the wrist could use either some padding or other support.

I came to the conclusion there were two issues here, one with the fiberfill used for support and another with the duct tape used for patterning.  The duct tape often sticks to itself before it sticks to the model, so It's hard to get a pattern with any kind of fine detail. I had problems with the tape sticking to itself especially around the knuckles and tendons and in between the fingers.  This post will be about the solution to this problem with the tape.  Look for more about the issue with the fiberfill in my next post. 

​​I combined this newfound willingness to work directly from a paw with the rediscovery of an overlooked supply in my studio- temporary fabric adhesive- and invented a new patterning method, which I dubbed... Frankensteining! Scary!!!

Starting the edits to the paw for realz. Here, I've cut the top of the paw along the line between the knuckles and the first joint of the fingers. Easy to see how the knuckles grew larger and shifted forward from the original foam paw to the fabric paw. (The original knuckles are outlined in green, the shifted fabric knuckles outlined in white.)  It also appears that the knuckle and first joint of the pinky finger (here marked with a 4) merged completely. 

Reining in the oversized knuckles. I've pinched up the excess fabric with sewing clips, cut it off, and stitched it back together again with a blanket stitch, highlighted here in pink. 

(What are all the random thick black marks on the paw on the right hand side, you may ask? These are where I'm anticipating cutting the revised paw apart to make the new pattern.)

Tightening up the toes. Again, I pinched up the extra fabric, trimmed it off, and sewed the new edges together.  I've highlighted those seams in pink. I like how this process made the finger joints more clearly defined.

​Now it's time for the temporary fabric adhesive! I sprayed some adhesive onto scraps of felt to make patches of sorts. I laid these patches over any gaps in the fabric on the paws, tucking the edges of the patches under the preexisting fabric. Then I traced along the edges of the fabric onto the patches with a Sharpie, cut off the excess, and stitched the patch onto the paw using a blanket stitch.  

Above, showing the before and after of this process. There are gaps in the fabric  between the knuckles and the first joint on the first, third, and fourth fingers. These gaps are outlined in pink in the picture on the left, and the finished patches outlined in the same manner on the right. 

This next change was a critical one, though it's hard to see in photographs. The duck tape was too sticky to allow it to be positioned as far back between the fingers as it needed to be, which totally threw off the relative proportions of the fingers and the back of the hand in the resulting pattern. In other words, the back of the hand turned out too long and the fingers turned out too short and stumpy when I stitched them up!!  You can see how much further back into the back of the paw the fingers join now.  

Here's another visual to help illustrate the problem with the fingers attaching to each other in the incorrect spot. The photo on the left hand side shows the fingers joined correctly and in the proper proportions to the back of the hand. The photo on the left shows the fingers joined incorrectly and too short in proportions to the back of the hand.   

Imagine also, how the two different paws would move. The one on the left could wiggle its fingers more easily, and spread them more widely than the one on the right.

All edits made! Now, disassembling... cutting the Frankensteined paw into pieces in order to make the new, refined pattern.

The various pieces need to be cut in a way that they'll lie flat in order to make a proper pattern.  Here I've made the knuckles lie flat by cutting them into some pretty groovy shapes. Then I've traced this piece onto paper. I am planning to scan the traced patterns for all the handpaw pieces into the computer, make them pretty with GIMP, and make the whole thing available as a download.  

You can see the palmar pad and dew claw still attached to this piece. I am happy with the patterns I have for these parts already, and since whether or not they're there doesn't effect whether or not this piece lies flat, I've left them there.

And here we have the official Before And After! The original blobby paw on the left, and the edited, refined paw on the right. I'm very happy with this progress. 

Really and truly. Here I am mugging with the new foam paw I made, all taped up and ready for patternmaking.

I get so excited about whichever phase of my paw I'm working on that I can't wait to make some more and then I think, you know what would make it *really* great?? And off I go again. I was so pleased I got a reasonable interpretation of tendons with the previous draft, and then I thought, the paw would be even better if the fingers lay closer together, tamping down a little more firmly on that inclination they have to spread out and morph into bird's or lizard's toes or something. 

Here is this newest foam paw, prior to taping. 

Here we have the previous foam paw compared to this newest paw. One big difference between them was my focus on getting the big, overall shapes of the new foot correct and worrying less about smaller details, such as carefully rounding all the edges and making sure the angles between the first and second joints of the toes were correct. Another big difference is the basic shape of the fingers. The fingers of the new foot are more or less elongated rectangles made from foam, rather like boxes, so they can lay fairly flush up against each other. Fingers from previous drafts were tubes, sheets of foam rolled up and the edges glued together. The curve of the tubes tended to push the fingers away from each other and make them spread out more.  
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I'm excited to sew up a felt version of this foot, stay tuned!!

Above, photos comparing draft #5 (left side, with the red toebeans, featured in this previous blog post) and this newest draft (right side, pink toebeans.) 

(It took me a bit to get photos of the paws, I got interrupted a lot...)

Backing up a bit. To make this new draft I needed to make a pattern for the tendons and devise support for them inside the paw, so they would hold their shape.

Here, making new pattern pieces by retaping the foam model (shown here in this earlier blog post)  to include the tendons that I had left out previous drafts. The photo on the countertop shows the tape from the back of the hand before it was cut apart, as well as reworked patterns for the adjacent finger joints. The picture on the cutting board shows the tape after being cut apart and flattened, thus becoming the official pattern for the tendons that can be traced onto fabric and cut out. 

Here, building up the tendons in the inside of the freshly sewn paw, along with structure for toebeans, knuckles and the first joints of the fingers. I also wanted to improve upon draft #5 by making it a little, well, less lumpy and I thought foam cut to fit the paw might do this better than the simple polyfil stuffing I'd been using.  I derived these foam parts by pulling apart the foam hand from which I'd made this pattern (shown in this blog post,) tracing and cutting out the appropriate pieces from foam and gluing them into the inside of the new hand. I could have probably just pulled the original hand apart and glued that in there instead, but I wanted to keep it for future reference. You can see this poor disassembled hand in these photos, in little plastic baggies labelled with which parts they were.

Shown here is the support for the palm and back of the hand, which wraps around the middle of the paw. The cut end you see in this photo will ultimately be glued to the other end (not visible in this picture) to make something of a tube, which will fit around the wearer's hand.

I built up the parts of the paw in layers, working from the outer to the inner. The tendons, knuckles and palmar pad are under this big foam support now, but will be on top of it when the paw is turned right side out. I turned this paw inside out *a lot* which is one reason why it looks so pilled and tatty in these photos. That and because it is made of cheap felt. As you have seen I make a lot of these drafts, so no point in using good fabric just yet!

And here's Ezzy, watching the whole process and providing moral support. As well as modelling a very fine pair of paws. During my long day job induced absence from blogging, I've taken lots of cat pictures. Brace yourself...

​I started making this video in August, thinking I'd use it to review and assess my sculpt before going on vacation. I was imagining plugging the sculpt into my subconscious this way and mulling over it while out in the woods camping, returning to it inspired and reinvigorated. That's not what happened, as you might guess. I started flailing in the middle of this video, sculpting and resculpting the area around the eyes and the top of the nose, but not making any significant improvements. I think this flailing happens when the subconscious realizes something is off but conscious awareness can't yet put it into words and express it clearly as a problem to solve. 

I've been flailing with this blog post too, working on it on and off since August. I kept thinking I'd found The Problem with my sculpt and wanted to unveil The Solution here with great fanfare, along with the clever thinking that led to its discovery. But every time I set out to write this post I only found myself with more questions. Soooo.... I present to you here, The State of The Problem at this Moment, and The Steps I have Taken to Solve It So Far. I leave the Grand Conclusion for another post, hopefully one that I will write in the Near Future. Right now I feel like I just need to get something written!
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​The common wisdom is that a sculpt, simply put, starts by establishing the relationships of the largest, most basic shapes to each other, then progresses to defining the relationships of smaller and smaller shapes within those big ones. The most common mistake a beginning sculptor makes, according to this wisdom, is working on fun little details before correctly establishing these big basic shapes. I wondered if this could be my problem.
Three dimensional art can be slippery though, as the points of reference that establish where those shapes begin and end can seem to shift in relation to each other, especially as the sculpt is viewed from different angles. So I tried to find reliable, easily reproducible viewpoints from which to establish my points of reference, one being a 90 degree side profile, and others being straight on from the top and  straight on to the underside. I might go into the latter two views in another post, but in this one, I'll stick with the 90 degree profile.

Wow, placing that ear at the back of the head would make that muzzle look short and the forehead **really** long!! Now here's the point at which I second guess myself  and wind up running and screaming back to the drawing board!! Away I go!!!
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Stay tuned!!

It's been a while since I checked in about my paw project! My last update was in March, when I finished building my most recent Foam Foot from which to make a pattern. Since then I've sewn up Prototypes #4 (with pink beans) and #5 (with red beans) and hopefully have made some progress. As I've mentioned before, I have fantasies of selling this pattern as a download, and maybe actual finished handpaws too. I have been told that the furry world could use another good feral handpaw pattern and that there's probably untapped market demand there.  

Above, Prototype #4 (I think?? I'm losing count.) My big problem here is the overly long toes and overly short palm/back of hand, most visible in the second picture from the right. Looks more like a lizard hand than anything canine. 

Above, Prototype #5. I still think the toes are too long, but I'm pleased with their overall shapes and that of the hand in general. 

Side by side comparison of the changes between #4 and #5. I've lengthened the palm in #5 and smoothed out the juncture between that and the bottom of the toes. IMHO this curving, regular line is much more aesthetically pleasing than the previous version. I hadn't actually shortened the toes between the two versions, thinking lengthening the palm would be enough, but I can see that still needs tweaking.

Another side by side comparison of #4 and #5. The seam going straight across the knuckles on #4 seems to flatten out and lumpify the paw. The scalloped seam on #5 in my mind is a great improvement.

There are lots of other differences between the tops of these paws. I made an attempt at tendons in #4 (those vertical seams on the back of the hand) and a more detailed attempt at knuckles in #5. The jury is still out on where I'll go from here. One question is, how much does this add to the aesthetics vs how much work does it add to the project? Also, it remains to be seen if I can actually make tendons/knuckles **work** in this context. IMHO neither #4 or #5 is there yet.

Onward! At least I have plenty of moral (and adorable!!)  support!!

Here we have Sans Souci Studios' armatures and Best Boys, Arnold Full Armature and Arnold "Han Solo" Half Armature. (Seriously, his name is Arnold. That's the name of the person from whom this was live-cast.) Other than being a handy place to put clay while sculpting, Arnold provides valuable points of reference. Especially Half Arnold. While building a sculpt on Full Arnold is a good way of seeing what a sculpt will look like in motion on a real wearer, Half Arnold provides a perfectly flat plane from which to build a system of reference points and angles. Invaluable, as otherwise reference points have a maddening way of seeming to shift on a 3D sculpture.

Above, finding the center of the sculpt, and making sure it's at a 90 degree angle to the armature back. I measure to find the center of the armature, mark the line on both the top and bottom of the head, and trace the center line around the sculpt, as shown above. At any point where the sculpt doesn't meet the armature back (here, at the throat)  I mark the center on masking tape and then extend a line up the tape onto the sculpt. I use various measuring tools to keep the line as perpendicular as possible to the armature back, but there's always a certain amount of eyeballing and guesswork involved.

Above, creating a "template" of sorts for the back of the sculpt, to help ensure its symmetry. First, I lay down that good old patterning material, duck tape over aluminum foil, on the armature base under the sculpt in progress. Then I trace on the tape along the edge of the sculpt, mark and fold it at the halfway mark, and trim so that the two sides of the template are symmetrical.  Then I lay the template back down on the armature and clay up the back edge of the mask along it. There's still a certain amount of eyeballing and guesswork involved, as the template can shift and stretch, and little bits of clay on the armature can put it out of whack. But still, it makes a pretty good guide.

Now I have a sculpt with a symmetrical back and a centered and perpendicular nose. Getting the sides of the sculpt to match is a lot trickier. Each side can cave in, bow out, or do some evil combination of those things in its own special way. The back template can help  address this by placing "landmarks" on the sides, to make specific areas on the sides easier to compare. For example, I can mark where the cut out is for the lower jaw on one side of the template, then fold the template, mark the same spot for the jaw cutout on the other side, then transfer the mark into the clay. 

Once I've placed the landmarks I can make a gizmo to compare the angles at specific points of each side of the head. Here, I have cut out a little piece from a cereal box, preserving one original corner so that I have a handy 90 degree angle for reference. Then I carefully cut a thin slot into the sculpt, press one edge of the box in, and trace along the side of the sculpt to get the angle of that specific spot, making sure one side of the 90 degree angle is flat on the armature back. I trim along the line I've traced and then compare the angle of my gizmo to the angle of the sculpt on the other side, again being careful to line up one side of my 90 degree angle with the armature back. Then I adjust the sculpt as needed. I don't have too long to play with the gizmo though, as being made out of thin cardboard the edges start squishing down and losing their shape fairly quickly.

And here we have my Glorious Goggles, my Reference Point Piece de Resistance. The goggles will help ensure that the eyes will be equidistant from the center line of the head, lie along a line that is at right angles to the center line of the head, and are both set back the same distance into the head. They will also help ensure that the eye bed I sculpt on my head will be parallel to the back of the mask and not tipped forward or back. Plus, if I'm fairly certain that my eye placement is accurate and even, I can use the eyes themselves as further reference points for sculpting the head.

How I made the Glorious Goggles. I've traced the backs of correctly sized eye cabochons onto a piece of thin craft plastic and cut the circles out. I've measured the distance between the eyes on my original resin head, cut down a disposable chopstick I got from Chinese takeout to that length, and carefully hot glued the plastic circles on the ends, lining up the outside edges of the circles with the ends of the chopstick. Then I marked the center of my contraption with a Sharpie. Next, I measured the distance from the armature back to a point a little bit in front of its eyes and cut two more pieces of chopstick to that length, thus making the "arms" of my goggles. I hot glued them on as well, taking care to hold the arms at more or less at a right angle to the front of the goggles until the glue cools. 

Above, beginning to set the glasses into the sculpt. I've started carving out holes into which to insert the arms of the glasses. These holes need to be pretty roomy so they don't force the arms out of their proper alignment. 

Adding a slot to the sculpt, into which I'll set the bridge of the glasses. I insert a skewer through the bridge of the sculpt's nose at the inside corner of each eye, keeping the skewer as perpendicular to the center line as I can. Then I cut a slot into the sculpt by pulling up on the skewer and removing clay along its path as needed with clay tools. 

Above, the glasses have been added. Now just to fill the clay back in around them. It's already easy to see adjustments I need to make to the cheeks and brows, with the right hand brow being raised higher and there being more material on the outside edge of the right eye. 

And, here we have the goggles completely clayed over, with a pair of acrylic eye cabochons resting on top of them, and a more developed sculpt in general. I'm happy to have this pretty solid point of reference in the sculpt, though it also makes me think how sculpting software makes symmetry so effortless!

It all started with these pictures, my favorite reference pics out of stacks and stacks of pics for dog feet. The pic of the tan dog foot is especially useful as it's relatively easy to see the bony structure underneath the skin.

Using my handy dandy Artograph projector, I enlarged tracings of these two pictures, one for the bottom of the paw and one for the top, to the size I wanted my finished handpaw to be. These would be my "master patterns" and I would use them to trace out smaller parts of the pattern....

....like so Here are patterns for individual toes and pads, traced from the "master patterns" using the light table and cut out.

I had actually started using these patterns before I started the clay feet I blogged about earlier, but I then I hit a snag and at the time couldn't figure out how to get around it.  

Yuck. This looks more like a hoof than a paw. There's the question, what to do with the space between the fingers? How to make this work as a glove? The fingers here are all separate pieces but they're all attached to a one piece underside. How would the fingers move?  (I could figure this out now, but this doesn't change the fact this paw is just plain old ugly.)

That's when I switched over to making and taking patterns from the clay feet, coming up with this "tubular" style of toes in the process. Here we have our friend the foam foot from my previous post, made from the enlarged and refined clay foot pattern, along with a selection of unattached toes and toebeans, showing off their tubular style. 

But then, as it so often happens, just as I was ready to tweak the sizing a little bit and then call it done, I got very excited about how cool the palmar pad for this foot looked, carefully carved and patterned the way it was. Then I got the itch to do the fingers that way too. I could carve knuckles! And tendons! How cool would that be??

 Here, the foam foot with the original tubular toes torn off and replaced with carved toes. The potential  is clear, but at least for me, carving each toe out of a single piece of foam made it easy for proportions and proper placement of various parts to get out of whack.

​I decided to try out a combination of carving, using the "tubular toes", and tracing and cutting out parts from my original patterns, thus coming up with this most recent foam foot. Here's a little demonstration of my method, making a random toe.

 First, using the patterns pictured at the beginning of this post and a sheet of 1/2" thick foam, I traced and cut out out two finger pieces and one knuckle piece and glued them into a stack. I inserted a claw shaped piece of cosplay foam in the end of the finger to mark the placement of the nail. I then used a pattern piece from my previous foam foot attempt and glued it underneath my finger/knuckle stack for the "tube", leaving an opening for the toebean. I then started to give the whole thing a little shape with scissors and an Exacto knife.  

Next, toebeans. Using my patterns again, I traced and cut out toebeans from the cosplay foam and some  1" thick sheet foam. I glued the cosplay foam into the end of the "tube", being careful to check my reference pics to get it aligned correctly and  at the proper angle inside the toe. (Be sure to line up the tip of the toebean wth the claw!) I then  glued the 1" foam toeabean in, using the cosplay foam toebean as a base.  Using a Sharpie, I sketched out the side of the toebean on the 1" foam and gave it some shape with my scissors and Exacto knife.   

Now, to  give the top of the toe a little bit more of a curve. Again I used my patterns to trace out just the half of the knuckle nearest the claw, and just the part of the finger underneath the knuckle. I tapered both pieces with the Exacto knife so they would be thickest around the knuckle and thinnest towards either end of the finger, and glued them into the appropriate spots on the "stack". Then I shaped them a little with my scissors and Exacto knife. 

​Using the patterns like this takes a lot of the guesswork out of the placement of the different parts, such as knuckles and toebeans.

The outline of the knuckle was getting a little  lost with all the layering and trimming, so I made the outline clearer by curving a thin piece of foam around it, gluing the foam down, and trimming the top a little to blend it in.   

Now to give the underside of the toe a little bit more of a curve. (I'm sorry but that first picture looks really rude!) With a Sharpie, I marked where I wanted the curve to be, cut a slit along that line, pulled one edge of the slit under the other and glued it down.  A curve, tada!

And here, our finished demonstration toe. I continued to refine the toes on the handpaw adding little pieces of foam and carving them down to get them just right, but this toe does get the basic process across. 

Now to start taping this foam foot and making the pattern for a fabric foot! So excited!

I continue on my quest to make a handpaw pattern using Matrices' tutorial, in which a small clay model is made, a pattern is taken from the model, and the pattern is enlarged to the proper size with an overhead projector.  I have fantasies of selling said pattern as a download, and maybe any actual handpaws too. Above, my fifth and final attempt to sculpt said model. Now, to take a pattern from the model and enlarge it.

Here we have the paw partially taped up, using white Duck tape over a layer of plastic wrap. I've sketched in lines where I think the seams will be, and registration marks (those little hash mark things) to help line the pattern up again once it's disassembled. I forgot to take pics before I started cutting the pattern off, so there's pieces missing between the middle toes here.

Here, the underside of the foot, again showing potential seam lines and registration marks. 

The pattern cut off the foot, lots of little pieces everywhere, don't sneeze! Then laid out and taped down on a piece of construction paper, to help keep them from slipping and sliding all over the place under the projector lid. 

And my very high tech projector setup in the basement, a piece of paper taped onto the washing machine for tracing out the enlarged pattern. (My daughter says the projector is the most analog thing she's ever seen in her life.)  I rolled the projector back and forth on its little wheely cart until I got the pattern to what looked like a good size, comparing it other patterns such as Matrices' and Freakhound's to get it in the ballpark.

The enlarged pattern, cut out and ready to go.

And, a first paw mockup using the pattern and cheap material. It does kinda sorta look like a paw, but I'm not happy with it. Next, revisions! 

I have two goals in mind here. One to make my own handpaw pattern. The second is to use this really cool technique furry how-to goddess Matrices describes in this tutorial, in which a small clay model is made, a pattern is taken from the model, and the pattern is enlarged to the proper size with an overhead projector. I have fantasies of selling said pattern as a download, and maybe any actual handpaws I make with it too. I have been told that the furry world could use another good feral handpaw pattern and that there's probably untapped market demand there. Charge!

For this first attempt I tried making a rough paw shaped chunk of clay and carving toebeans out of the bottom and knuckles and toes out of the top. This sculpt has a lot of problems but the worst in my mind is that the toebeans and palmar pad all wound up on the same plane, parallel to the wrist, making the paw look stiff and unnatural. 

For this second attempt, I tried to make the angles of the toe bottoms more natural. Closer, but not there yet. The top of the foot also  leaves a lot to be desired, looking like a featureless cube of clay, especially when viewed from the top.

Attempt number three, when viewed from the side, has a little more of that oval shape we're going for. The top of this foot also looks more shaped and natural than those in the previous two. However it also looks a little squished and disproportionate. When viewed from the top, the toes look too long and the back of the paw too short.  

Attempt number four features... an armature! What a concept! Underneath the clay the armature looks like a little wire tree, with the trunk for the wrist and palm and four branches for the toes. The armature helps to hold the parts of the foot in place, keep them from getting squished out of shape, and maintain the correct proportions.  The wire also makes it easier to bend the toes into the proper position without breaking them off.  I'm happier with this foot, but I can't help but think the back of the paw looks a little swollen, like it was stung by a bee.

​This group of photos shows a slightly earlier version of the last paw undergoing some last minute edits. The first photo  shows the foot being checked against a favorite reference pic, and the second photo shows a tracing of this earlier version being checked against a superimposed tracing of the reference pic. (I especially love this tracing as it really shows how the two outer toes on a dog's foot are different sizes, with the "pointer" toe being larger than the "pinky" toe.) The third pic shows the finished foot, after all the edits have ben made. 

Above, a turnaround of this last paw, looking a little worse for wear from the pattern making process. (More on that later!) This paw is also built on an armature, similar to that in attempt number four. ​ Perhaps more improvements can be made on this foot but at this point I was thoroughly sick of clay feet and wanted to get on with it. Charge!