Hi, guys! I've been lurking quite a while and just now made an LJ account in order to ask a question. I'm not entirely familiar with LJ so please hit me if I'm going about this all wrong.
This is my first go at a suit. Everything was going fairly well to begin with - I'm building on a balaclava, and the jaw moves pretty responsively, good vision, etc.
I got my jawset, tusks, and a tongue (ordered from Dreamvision Creations) in the mail today. It's the dragon jawset/tongue, plus two tusks and they all look nice, very well made. Unfortunately, my muzzle was too small to accommodate (ordering jawset first next time, oops!) so I had to reconstruct a bunch of both the top and bottom jaw, so my head is kinda in the process of being revamped and is a little ugly.
Anyway, I'm now finding that the jaw is far too heavy to support itself, even with only the tusks installed, which are fairly light (plastic covered foam of some sort). The tusks are an integral part of the design, but even without them I fear the jawset would make the bottom jaw too heavy! As it is now, his mouth is kinda hangin' open all stupid, it looks pretty silly.
For the moving jaw, I followed Matrices' tutorial on Youtube - elastic attached to the balaclava, and foam built atop that. I guess my question is, what the heck can I do to give a heavy bottom jaw more support? I figure I'd get another roll of elastic and mess with that a bit until I figure it out, but I'd really love any tips you might have.
Thank you! If photos are desired I can post those as well. I wasn't sure how important that was, considering my question.
This is my first go at a suit. Everything was going fairly well to begin with - I'm building on a balaclava, and the jaw moves pretty responsively, good vision, etc.
I got my jawset, tusks, and a tongue (ordered from Dreamvision Creations) in the mail today. It's the dragon jawset/tongue, plus two tusks and they all look nice, very well made. Unfortunately, my muzzle was too small to accommodate (ordering jawset first next time, oops!) so I had to reconstruct a bunch of both the top and bottom jaw, so my head is kinda in the process of being revamped and is a little ugly.
Anyway, I'm now finding that the jaw is far too heavy to support itself, even with only the tusks installed, which are fairly light (plastic covered foam of some sort). The tusks are an integral part of the design, but even without them I fear the jawset would make the bottom jaw too heavy! As it is now, his mouth is kinda hangin' open all stupid, it looks pretty silly.
For the moving jaw, I followed Matrices' tutorial on Youtube - elastic attached to the balaclava, and foam built atop that. I guess my question is, what the heck can I do to give a heavy bottom jaw more support? I figure I'd get another roll of elastic and mess with that a bit until I figure it out, but I'd really love any tips you might have.
Thank you! If photos are desired I can post those as well. I wasn't sure how important that was, considering my question.