So I made a thread a while ago about I don't care. So some of you may recall that my dad does shit with dinosaurs. Mounts million year old fossils. Does exact bronze reproductions. All that good stuff. A little backstory before I really begin with the point of the thread. My dad's an artist. Professor of drawing/metalsmithing at a local college. Years and years ago he was commissioned by the Natural History Museum in NYC to make a bronze replication of one of their dinosaurs. he did, and boom. Now big names like Spielberg, Steven King, Ben Stiller, etc... own my dad's sculptures.
Now to why I'm making the thread. On the side of my real job I work for my dad to make some extra cash. He gets orders for dinosaurs or any of his other stuff and passes them right down to me and I make them from scratch. Just today I started my first Tyrannosaurus Rex. It's pretty big...a lot of intricate pieces...and frustration. Each day I go into work on it, I'll post up my progress so you guys can watch how I bring a dinosaur back to life.
Today I started by shooting waxes. I use molds that have been used thousands of times. You shoot wax into the molds and get a wax of the part you're currently making.
As an example, here's a photo of two of the claws I shot.
Here's the progress so far. Every part of the dinosaur was shot today (some aren't in the picture, though.) Tomorrow I'll come in and cast them in bronze. After that, I put them together, mount, clean up, and I've got a dinosaur. Sounds easy, right? Well that'll be another ~6 hours.
Until nest time, here's a photo of my dad's most recent smilodon piece he did. Shit's cash.
And here's an article on my dad where you can view a lot of his stuff.
http://brantworks.com/skelmaker-nelson-maniscalco.php
-Simba