Description:
Brushable size custom of Badumsquish’s OC (and possibly the first moth pony custom ever made).
I started with an earth pony base. I felt just having a regular smooth body wouldn’t be good enough, so I decided to try flocking it. Granted I didn’t want to spend the money on a flocking gun, so I looked for something else. I found velvet fingernail flocking on Ebay and decided to try it. I brushed on Gorilla wood glue in small sections, then sprinkled the flock on. Unfortunately this flock clumps together, so I took a very fine screen mesh (sold as a detail item for HO scale model trains), put some on it, then gently sifted it onto the body.
This time I didn’t use nylon hair. Instead I used fake animal fur from Hobby Lobby to make it look more like the character. A little tricky to work with, but it worked. The antennae are a couple of feathers (they sell them in small packs at Hobby Lobby. Unfortunately no 2 were alike).
Finally the wings. They needed to be thin, translucent, soft, but fairly strong. After exploring ideas, I settled on first making the veins out of very thin sheet plastic (drew the shapes on, then cut out the middles). I glued this to white nylon material, then trimmed it to the shape (each wing is 2 pieces). I painted the veins a light gray, and repeated this on the other side of the nylon. Then I thinned the lt. gray acrylic paint and carefully dabbed spots on the wings, which soaked through and eliminated the need of painting both sides.
At this point it was obvious the frame wasn’t strong enough as the larger wing halves were drooping, so I figured I’d have to add more thin plastic to the front edge. I had to wait for the flock to arrive, and while waiting the wings developed an upward curl, which solved the drooping problem. Finally I put some glue on the veins and sprinkled the flock on them too.
Overall I think it’s about the best one can do to make a pony like this that has the characteristics of a moth. I’ll probably have to keep her in a bag though as the flocking and nylon will trap dust like there’s no tomorrow, and you won’t get it out without risking taking the flock off (it already looks like some got stuck to it).
