Next, I make both of them trousers. This is where some tailoring or costuming experience comes in handy. With a little practice, it’s really not hard to draft your own clothing patterns, especially for this sort of project, since the clothing only has to LOOK good – it doesn’t have to actually be functional. The trousers are fairly simple, just a straight leg construction. I found a wonderful soft black fabric for all of the clothing, which had a nice drape to it. Finding a good variety of fabric that is thin enough to drape properly at this small scale can be difficult.
I sew the trousers directly to the cloth body at the waist (to keep them in place), then wrap the leg from the knee down with leather strips, binding the trouser fabric inside the leather strips. This seemed to be a stereotypical Viking look, with the leather straps wrapped around the lower legs. I like the way it’s turning out, because it almost looks like they’re wearing tall boots.
The tunic is another fairly simple pattern, with close fitting sleeves and a flared bottom edge. I want their costumes to be identical, so I need something that looks good on both the standing figure and the crouching figure. The skirt-like tunic works out well because it looks good on the standing raven, while still having enough room to drape nicely over the crouching raven’s legs. I leave the neckline cut very low and unfinished, as I’d be gluing the ruff feathers on over top of the tunic.
Here, I’ve glued all the ruff feathers into the little holes I’ve sculpted in the chest. I’ve used black neck hackle feathers for this, because they are pointed like a raven’s feathers. Also, at this point I can start working out exactly how I want to construct the wings, and you can see I’ve added a bit of epoxy clay to the wing wires at the back.
