I made Toothless (and a frog)

Hey folks, my name is Adam and I like to make tiny nerdy things, and I like dragons, but I don't like teeth, so naturally, I made a toothless dragon. Kinda, I mean, I made a dragon named Toothless, but I'm gonna keep its mouth closed so that I don't have to make any teeth. Actually, in the interest of being completely transparent, I don't mind making teeth at all. In reality, it's pretty straightforward and easy, all things considered, but I didn't know how to start this video, so I opted to lie in the pursuit of a crappy joke. And I have no regrets. Well, no, that's not true either. I have lots of regrets, like buying a skateboard while living in a city that's mostly cobbled streets, despite having never ridden a skateboard and being in my mid-thirties. However, I have no regrets about that opening joke. Or the use of rocks to add rocky texture to what is becoming a rocky clay outcropping. I'm building a basic rocky block on a block of MDF since my first thought was to have Toothless looking angry perched in a pre-hey-how-are-you pose, but if you got here by clicking on the thumbnail, you probably are already aware of the direction it ended up going. Regardless, once the block's been baked, I can remove it from the base and break out some armature wire to make my dragon bones. I'll bend two of these wires in half and tape them together, marking out the shoulders and hips before adding the third wire down the middle and refining the shape of the limbs so they're a little more dragon-y looking. Then I'll bring the block back and begin planning. I'm just going to sculpt Toothless straight onto the block so I don't have to faff about withholding him and adequately attaching him later, so I'll drill some holes to fit his elongated limbs into, bending and shaping him appropriately before bulking out his torso and tail a touch prior to slapping on that initial layer of clay. This first layer is mostly to give me a thin base that's easier to build on top of and smooth out, so at this point I'm no particularly fussed about proper proportions. Once I've coated the majority of the shiny bottom base of aluminium, I can start to thicken up the necessary sections with a bit more strategic inclaying until I'm at about 85% appropriate thickness. At this point then, I'll slap a somewhat head-shaped shape onto the neck nub where the head generally goes, thickening up the surrounding area to peak thickness now that I've got all the parts in place. As I mentioned before, I won't bother making the inside of the mouth since that's where the teeth are and thanks to that crappy opening line, I've painted myself into a Toothless corner, so instead I'll make a Toothless smirk before fitting some oversized eyes in place, building up the surrounding eyebrow and ridge and lip and all that other good stuff. I know Toothless's movements are based on the animator's cats, but I'm confident that his body shape, at least prior to having wings, is based on an axolotl. He's even got the same sort of horns that an axolotl has. Actually, you know what? Was Toothless based on an axolotl? Oh. Now with that apparently commonly known fact out of the way, I can add his little axolotl ears and blend them into the rest of his head, making sure to add the little duo on the side before pushing him to the back so I can make some claws. I like to pre-bake my claws prior to fitting them into paws, but waiting 20 minutes for the to cure the clay and then waiting for that clay to cool down is a bit too annoying, so when it comes to making little stuff like this, I like to drop it into a heat-resistant silicone cup, then blast it with a heat gun for a minute or so until it's essentially oven-baked. I'll give these a minute or so to cool down while I poke some divots into the paws where the claws will go, at which point the claws are now cool enough to fit in place. Finally, to blend the claws into the paws and make the paws look a bit more plausible, I'll smoosh a little wormy-dealy just above the claws so I can shape some teeny-tiny toes into the tips of the legs. Otherwise, with the paws clawed, I can then move on to the second to last step of the bodybuilding process, which is adding lots of lizard wrinkles around all the body parts that would likely have wrinkles. This means any of the articulating joints like the shoulders and the hips, behind the knees and the elbows, and along the tail where it starts to curl inwards. Otherwise, with the wrinkling done, I can add that last bit of detail by way of this homemade bumpy texture roller, which will impart a lovely, toothless-accurate bumpy texture across his whole body. I'll give the head a careful bumpy texturing, too, before breaking out my larger scale texture stamp to add the larger scales to his forehead and along the lower parts of his legs. With the surface texture finished, I can add the last bit of detail, which will be the spikes along the backs of his forelimbs, as well as the spikes along the back of his... his back, I guess, leading down into his tail. Then I'll add some teeny-tiny spikes to his head before breaking out a teeny-tiny ball stylus so I can apply some dots of liquid clay to the underside of his axolotl ears. Finally, before a full body bake, I'll mark out some divots where his wings will fit, as well as carve some long lines along his back so I can attach the leathery bits of the wings a bit more easily. Otherwise, once the body's been baked, to lock it all in place, I can set it aside and make some wings. I found a pretty good anatomical drawing of Toothless's wings on Google and printed it out so I can use it to get an accurate-sized wing based on the dimensions of the model I've made thus far. To make the bones of the wing, I'll take some thick armature wire and cut it down to size, then snip the tip at an angle to give me a nice sharp point, and to make that point not so life-threateningly sharp, I'll sand it down a bit. I can then use the printout to reshape the wire into a wing and cut the rest of the wingers, laying them out on the paper before using some aluminium tape to hold it all together. I also thought that today would be a good opportunity to try making wings a little differently, so instead of making my wings out of clay, I'm gonna use some more of this aluminium tape draped over the wingers to create one side of the wing, then I'll flip it over and use a full sheet of foil on the other side which should adhere nicely to the sticky tape beneath. Once I've squeezed all the bubbles out and smoothed the foil layer flat, I'll take my paper wing that I cut out of the sheet to help me mark out the dimensions of the wing before carefully cutting out the all-metal wing. And with that, I've got a pretty good, pretty solid, incredibly light and flexible foil wing that can be neatly fit into those pre-carved wing receptacles I made prior to baking the body. Obviously, I made a second wing the exact same way, then made the little pelvic and caudal fins using the same method. Now, because the wire and foil are flexible and strong, I should be able to safely bend the wings into the proper position. However, because some of the sections are bending quite a bit, I used a ball stylus to try and smooth as much of the wrinkly foil out as I could prior to applying my secret weapon, Cause Clay Flex Flow. This is just a flexible liquid clay that can be painted over a surface and baked in the oven like any other clay, but it's extra flexible and light, so it should hold up well to being jostled while also creating a unifying flat layer over top of the wings. I'm hoping this will create an easily paintable surface while also hiding the wrinkliness of the foil beneath. As you can see, when it's been baked, it's clear and smooth, but it doesn't fill the larger gaps, which I'll need to fix by using some good old run-of-the-mill clay and a bacon bond. Otherwise, once I've got all the gaps filled, I'll work my way around the wings, building up some of the thicker sections before heading down to the tip of the tail where I can make the torn sections of Toothless's caudal fin. With that done, the last thing to do will be to work my way around the body, adding bumpy texture everywhere that I de-textured while adding the wings. At this point, I've realized the angry Toothless perched on a rock is looking a lot more pensive than I had intended, so I'll start to pivot into the Toothless looking at something in the water, which means I need to resize the rock so that he is no longer centered on the block. Additionally, if he is going to be looking at something in the water, then I need to raise the rock up a bit higher so his nose isn't submerged, which means I'll need to add a layer of clay to the top of the base and then smoosh Toothless's rocky perch in place on top, filling all the gaps in with a bit more clay and adding that same rocky texture to my freshly added clay. Now with my rocky perch perched slightly higher on the block, I can set Toothless aside and make something for him to look at. And I figured what's better for a winged cat to be enthralled by than a bunch of fish swimming in a circle? To that end, I'll take some balls of clay and roll them into little fish-shaped sausages, then using another pre-made scale roller, I'll add lots of scales to the body of the fish before baking it so that I can add the head, tail, and fins. Then I can bring Toothless back and lay my trio of fish in place, which may or may not work depending on how deep I want to make the water. I'm of two minds here since I think this is the perfect depth for Toothless, but it doesn't leave a lot of room for the fish that size to be swimming around. For now though, I'll paint it all up before making a decision, starting by painting Toothless black. Which I would normally do with the old bang it on the table editing, but given that Toothless is literally just a big black cat bird, that would kind of feel anticlimactic. So instead, we'll do it the old-fashioned way. The rock he's perched on is already an excellent rocky gray, but I want to add some contrast and shading, so I'll give it a thick wash of black with just a teeny tiny bit of brown, dabbing away any of the excess. Then I'll wrap the rock in a haphazard layer of cling film so I can break out my airbrush and give Toothless a full once-over with a black primer. Ideally, I could mix up some chromatic black by combining opposite colors of the spectrum, which would leave me with a black that has just a touch of color when the light hits it, but I want to make sure it's plenty capable of adhering to the exposed metal, so this time I'm just sticking with my run-of-the-mill black primer. I'll also blast the fish with a black base coat, since I want to give them a shiny color-shifting top coat, and a black primer apparently gives the best results. Back to the base, I think I might be able to make it look like deep water if I paint the bottom of the base blue, so I'll start by wet blending a couple shades of blue until I've got a To zhuzh the rocks up a bit, and because it's sitting so close to the water, I'll use my moss in a bottle to add some mossy growth all over the rocks, then once I've got that built up, I can get to work adding the last little details to Toothless. I'll paint his claws with a bone white base coat, then work my way back around adding a touch of umber wash to dirty them up a bit before moving on to his eyes, which will get a white base coat to facilitate the next layer of on top, which I'll then water down with a bit more white before adding the big black pupil in the center. The beauty of an all-black body is that it's nice and easy to clean up any of the overpainting that may have happened while coloring the eyes. Finally, to give the eyes a little life, I'll add a layer of UV resin so they're nice and shiny. With that, Toothless is all but finished, however, before I finish painting the fish, I want to see how they look on the blue base, and it kind of looks like crap, and given how much time I've already put into this, a crappy base feels like a really poor way to finish the sculpture, so I'm going to change direction again and start hacking away at the blue base until I've got a somewhat less uniformly flat bottom. To smooth it out a bit and give it a bit of a sandy riverbed texture, I'll cover the torn-up MDF base in some wood hole filler that I'll then embed a whole bunch of rocks and sand into. Once it's dried and the rocky bottom is stuck in place, I'll blast it with a couple coats of browns to make it look muddy, then using a sponge, I'll lightly tap some greys on top to highlight the stones, followed by a mossy green to... well, make it look kind of mossy, I guess. I'll then drill some little holes so I can fit some river reeds around the rock, and I'll anchor them in place with a drop of CA glue, and I think we can all agree that this is a much, much, much better riverbed ready for some water. I want the edge of the water exposed, so it's like a little slice of the river that's been frozen and turned into a diorama, so I'm repurposing a little plastic skirting that I've cut to length and attached with some quick-set silicone caulking, using some tape to hold it in place while the silicone cures. Also, I'm not totally convinced this frame is going to hold, so I've clamped it just to be safe. To make my water, I'll mix up some two-part epoxy resin that should cure in about 24 hours, then I'll add a little blue and green to give it a nice riverbed coloring, and it's ready to be poured into the frame. Additionally, because the frame is wide and the river is relatively shallow, I'm less concerned this time about bubbles, as they should have plenty of time to work their way to the surface, but I'll use a little stir stick to press the resin into all the hard-to-reach places before pouring the rest of it on top and waiting the requisite 24-hour period before checking to make sure that it's properly cured. Otherwise, since it's looking pretty solid, I can safely demold it. And in a truly shocking twist, I was hasty. The center of the resin is cured, but the edges are still a little soft, and that snapping noise you heard was the not-quite-fully-cured resin breaking as I pulled the plastic walls away. You'd think by now I would have learned my lesson, but every time I feel like I've found a new way to cock things up. Fortunately, this is entirely surface damage and is more just a reminder of my impatience than a problem, since I can just wait for the resin to cure and it'll be plenty solid. But in the meantime, I'm going to fill the little cracks and imperfections by mixing up some 5-minute epoxy and spreading it over the surface with my finger. I also happen to have a little walnut veneer that'll nicely hide the gnarly MDF base beneath it, and the 5-minute epoxy will work as a glue to keep the veneer in place while it cures. And once it's hardened, I don't think you'd notice if I hadn't pointed it out, so with a walnut riverbed base looking based, it's time to make something for Toothless to look at. And given that this is a little riverbed and Toothless is perched on a mossy rock, I figured maybe I ought to make some lily pads to float in the water. To that end, I'll make some little clay circles of varying sizes, cutting little v's into the sides, then roughly texturing them so they look like little sad grey lily pads. Once they've been baked, I'll free them from the tray, then make a little painting perch on my mat with painter's tape sticking sticky side up so I can stick the lily pads upside down in order to paint the bottoms green before flipping them over and painting the tops with a couple different shades of green. The bottoms probably won't be visible, so one shade is enough, but I want the to have lots of variation. Otherwise, once I've got lots of little green lily pads painted, I can peel them off the painting perch and prepare my pond for the impatting process. This really just involves covering the finally fully cured resin riverbed in a layer of uv resin ripples into which I can place the lily pads somewhat haphazardly. A full blast with a big uv light will cure the ripples, which means all that's left to do is make the object of our dragon's attention. To make my teeny tiny attention grabber, I'll take a little lump of clay and smoosh it into a slightly pointy looking egg and poke a couple of divots so I can fit some relatively large eyeballs in place and build up the surrounding area. I've put on a nitrile glove to give the lump a little bit of bumpy texture, and I can add a little dip in the back then bake the body to prevent deforming the shape while I add some big footless legs onto the back and some little footless legs on the front. Then once I've given the front legs a little bit of a bend, I'll put my little footless frog on a tray and add a full set of teeny tiny toes one at a time before baking it again and carefully freeing it from its black oven tray base. There's not much to hold on to so I'll stick a pin to the underside and clamp it with some tweezers while I start to add color by wet blending various shades of blue getting darker as I work my way to the top. Once the blues had a chance to dry I'll flick black dots all over the top side of the body and paint the eyes black before adding a white glaze to the feet and the underside and with that I can unpin my teeny tiny blue poison dart frog and fit him onto the lily pad directly in front of Toothless. Otherwise I'd say we're all done here and on to the glamour shots. As always a big old thank you to the fine folk over on Patreon and a special hey how are you to the newest of them. North of the border is stinky, Jay is the duckiest duck that ever did duck, book dragon, happy 40th Zach, we love you the most, bzzcc, musical jare bear, boo boo of binky and bubba, Malkior, Ryan H, Justin, Allison Weber, Will Moeller, Delfia, Gastly Pillows, Too Thick to Work Today, Two Taters Short of a Sack, Craig, Jason L. Bryan, Ivan Miguez, Void Dragon, and a boy named Benson with a dog named Clyde. You are the teeny tiny poisonous frog that holds this curious dragon of a channel's attention. I thought this video would be a nice reminder that not everything needs to be an eldritch horror. Otherwise we'll see you next time. Cheers.