Druid Tier 6 pauldron and headpiece making of

Next part of my Druid Tier 6 story from World of Warcraft:

Most of my work with fabrics was done, so I started with my weapons and my props.
The sample had 2 very complicated pauldrons and one helmet.

At first I tried to model both forms with expanding foam. I used rabbit wire as a base and covered it. My plan was to carve it now, but unfortunately my skills were at the time not good enough for such a hard sample. The pauldrons were too big, too long and just looked wrong...

I was frustrated and discarded both pauldrons. It was time for a other technique so I tried the one I learned 2 years ago, while making my Druid Tier 1 project.

At first I took a polystyrene half hollow and clayed some board on it. I carved the bird skull out of expanding foam and covered everything with crepe tape, newspaper and paper maché. The wings are made of board and foam (as core) and covered them with newspaper. My boyfriend had to do the paint job and I clayed everything together and added details with fur and feathers. Yeah... and what I have to say? This time I was very satisfied!

Okay... but the though that I still had to build a second one, was just horrible...
Someday both parts were done and I started with the building of the headpiece. I made the first steps at the same time I build the first version of my pauldrons, and fortunately I was satiesfied with the first version.

Here I took some rabbit wire, cut out the right form and clayed (with hot clay) the cut lines together. I covered this base completely with expanding foam, waited a while and carved the right model with a carpet cutter. After this I covered everything with crepe tape, news paper and paper maché. Paper maché gave it the last details and i got a really flat surface after I sanded it with some sandpaper. I added some details with wooden half spheres within the paper machè like this round things on the topside. The pattern on this ear muffs were just some greyboard parts I glued on the head piece. The next step were acrylic paint and acrylic finish. I took some feathers, painted their ends with acrylic paint, clayed them (with hot clay) and... Finished!

Puh... I wrote enough for today. In the next part I will tell you something about my staff Journey's End.