Fun With Heat Guns

I got a couple of Stablemates in the mail that were supposedly "ready to paint". NOT. So since this little G1 Quarter Horse stallion (click the link to see what he looked like w/o any work done) would have to be re-prepped anyway, I decided to make him into a remaking project. I've only used my heat gun to fix warped legs so far, but I got adventurous with him and decided to move his head. Observe:

I know he's a stock type horse, but I don't want to give him the crazy low pleasure headset that is fashionable these days. I just want him looking like a casually working school horse. At first I was thinking walk, but one of the kind ladies on Blab pointed out that his diagonal pairs of legs are moving together, indicating a trot or jog. Um, then something is severely wrong with his left hind leg's position. It's so upright and "post-like". 

So I fired up the ole' heat gun again and proceeded to move the leg into a more correct position for a jog. Or at least, I tried to. I then accidentally broke part of his leg off. Whoops. Guess I'll be needing another one of those then huh. 

So last night, I sculpted a leg! Well, part of one. Basically it was a little prosthetic stump of Apoxie Sculpt from his hock joint down to a little nubbin that will eventually be made into a fetlock. Then the hoof. I wasn't genius enough to take a picture of that before I started on tonight's progress. Sorry!

Tonight, I sanded the leg stump so it's more flush with the rest of leg, and more... leg like. It was kind of lumpy. But stuff like that is so easy to fix w/ a little sanding it's not worth it to spend hours trying to get my stump to look leg-like while the Apoxie is soft. 

More sculpting tonight! I sanded the crap out of his hip/butt muscles and upper leg muscles on that leg, and started resculpting them to better depict a forward moving leg rather than a post leg. I also filled in his neck a little where it got squished when I moved it, and screwed around with sculpting his front leg's muscles too. Oh and I straightened out his tail a bit.

Ta-Da!

I don't know why that last photo makes his leg look more like an elephant trunk coming out of his hip. It doesn't look like that in person. Maybe it's the angle/lighting/shadow whatever. 

So far my method has been to smush apoxie sculpt onto him and then refine the blobs with sand paper. It's fun! I'm learning! lol...truth be told it's a little frustrating to not pick this up and immediately be good at it. It's been a long time since I've tried to learn something new. I don't care if he turns out perfect in the end, since he's a first try.

I do plan on re-working his raised foreleg a little (and the other hind for that matter), but for now I'm leaving it because he can stand on 3 legs, but he can't stand on 2 until I make a base. ;)

I'm hoping the end result will be a happy little school pony, jogging. Not too fast, and not too much action. Remember, school pony! And a stock-type grade horse. Therefore = lazy, somewhat slow moving. Not a high stepping warmblood or gaited horse. 

Reference photos I'm using for leg positioning:

This one has way too much extension/action for what I'm going for, but it's still useful to see muscles, shapes, etc.