Need help with Orthocone sculpture

I have also a printed picture of the BBC-Basilosaurus I wanted to use as reference, but I realized early enough, that it has a lot of errors. Its teeth are also completely false (okay, this is not important for a small model, but the accuracy of the documentation). I even started a metre-long papermache model, but I never finished it.
Finding good references of orthocones is really not very easy. The BBC-Orthocone looks indeed very cool, but I have my doubts that they really looked so, especially with the "hood". I could also imagine that their eyes were lesser primitive. But I also highly dislike this strange but very common reconstructions which shows orthocones with this bulbous head. I really can´t imagine that this was their natural appearance, it looks just too stupid. And then there´s the aptychus-problem, but I completely ignored it, because it can turn you crazy (it is possible that 99,9% of all nautiloid reconstructions are very very false). When I was in Vienna last year, I made some photos of partly very nice reconstructions: Photos from the Museum of Natural History, Vienna
In the thread about the photos I made in Tübingen, there are also some photos of orthocone fossils. Some of them once belonged to really gigantic specimens: Sordes's ceph fossils from Tubingen, Germany
 
Sordes, how did you sculpt that incredible skin texture on your models?

The only time I got anything like that I sculpted my animal and sprayed faux stone on the model for texture. I could do this again but there is not much control in this method.

-Leelan
 
Well, this is a skin texture you will never be able to sculpt with a tool...I made a sculpey die witht the negative impression of a dried starfish with a very interesting surface structure and used it to transfer it on the model. But it was really not easy and a lot of work. I also sculpted last week a new model in a comparable unusual reconstructive way, will post photos later.
 
Neat!

Reminds me of a story from Babylon 5. One of the CGI FX artists were designing ships for the Shadows when he looked over at his dog. He said something like, "Aha!!!" and scanned his dog's nose. That scan became the texture for the Shadow's main battle ship.

The story might not be true but if it isn't, it should be. :sagrin:

I might go to my local craft store to check out their starfish. Or I may just go with faux stone.

-Leelan :sink:
 
modelnut;117638 said:
Neat!

Reminds me of a story from Babylon 5. One of the CGI FX artists were designing ships for the Shadows when he looked over at his dog. He said something like, "Aha!!!" and scanned his dog's nose. That scan became the texture for the Shadow's main battle ship.

The story might not be true but if it isn't, it should be. :sagrin:

I might go to my local craft store to check out their starfish. Or I may just go with faux stone.

-Leelan :sink:

I don't know about that, but I'm almost positive that the moving textures on the Vorlons were either initially a bug, or were at least inspired by a bug... it's exactly what happens when your 3-d/solid texture isn't transformed along with the object it matches... a very common problem for student projects in a computer graphics class!
 
Here are finally some pictures of my new model. At the begining I wanted to sculpt it with open arms, but it ended up with closed arms. As this looks a bit boring, I added a fine structure on most parts of the surface (sadly hardly visible at the photos) and a lot of small skin appendiges, similar to those seen in cuttlefish. It was really a lot of work, and I needed several hours a add all of the about 60 pieces of sculpey. I could imagine that it would look very cool if it was painted.
I choose this comparable unconventional idea not only because it looks more interesting than plain skin, but also because I could well imagine that some of the more ground-dwelling species of nautiloids had actually such skin structures
 

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Those orthocones came in all sorts of shapes and sizes, so why shouldn't the soft parts have varied enormously too? That's the nice thing about your lovely models Sordes, because we don't realy know what they looked like, you are never wrong!

Look forward to seeing the finished model as ever!
 
WOW!

Looks fantastic!

Wonder why the Forum didn't let me know about new additions to the thread? It did before. :-/

I have made absolutely no progress on my scupture. :sad:

My apartment flooded and then I got sick. :yuck: Thankfully it didn't go so far as pneumonia. Hopefully I will be getting my life back together soon and can resume the project.

I did find an illustration the pertains to orthocones. This one is much more nautiloid-like. http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e9/modelnut/LuisRey.jpg

Looks a bit to complex. Don't know if I want to go that way.

You folks have been at this longer than me. What do you think?

-Leelan
 
I have also again a lots of ideas for new models, but as usual no time... I suppose the first new one could be a thylacine of something like this, or a catfish or a cuttlefish, but I know nothing for sure. I would love to sculpt an ammonite, but I would need a very good fossil no make a cast of the shell, because I will hardly manage to sculpt the complex shape of the ammonite shell.
Perhaps I will also once again sculpt a new orthocone (I´m still not happy with it, but I made some sketches which would be probably okay as a model), and I would not make it very nautilus-like. Nautiloids were surely different from the modern nautilus, and surely also different from modern squids (damn aptychus-problem!), but I suppose they were not as "primitive" as nautilus.
 
Aw...man, right when I showed up the shows over. That was a very nice sculpture though, if I had one of those epic nautiloid mask things you can where on your head I'd totally show up in class wearing one of those. I wonder what my professor would say....:shock:
 
CC,

The show is not over. Sordes has done several fine sculptures and this fellow did his --- and a very large one it is too. :shock:

Mine will be maybe fifteen inches when it is finished. I have to let the putty set for eight hours before I can do any more work. And I have yet to decide whether my orthocone will be more sqid-like with ten tentacles or more nautiloidish with umpteen smaller tentacles. I probably won't decide until I have the head finished . . .

I will certainly keep you p[osted.

- Leelan
 

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