Full scale mock-ups

Tooth shape cut from a thick piece of plastazote

Three foam sections pinned and glued together

Aligning the bottom jaw with the chin piece

Attempting to build up the bulk of the shape from small sections of foam

Two weeks into the project, I have decided to use foam to make up the form of the crodoile head. While yellow foam was successful in my scale sample, it is not easy to carve into as it does not melt on the hot wire cutters. Foam provides a good base for fabrication and is cheap, light and safe to use.

To create a guide for my foam head, I firstly had to see how I could fit this around my helmet and test whether the long snout proved too front heavy a structure. The image shown above is my first attempt to piece sections of foam around the helmet, secured with wire staples and PVA glue. This gave me the rough dimensions to work from for a larger, single piece of foam. Sections of small foam pieced together like this does not prove to be very strong, compared with a two whole pieces for the top and bottom jaws. My second attempt was constructed using the hot wires and hot wire sculpting tools. As there are far fewer pieces, sticking it back together is much less of a challenge, especially with contact adhesive. Some sections, such as the tongue, eyelids and teeth have been cut from Plastazote.