Papi-Anon's Paleoart

[Papi-Anon]

First print of Pakicetus ahoy!

First off decided to print in the dark MJF (multi-jet-fusion) 3D printed plastic to see how smooth its surface detail would be on such a figure compared to the usual high-def SLS nylon I usually shell out more for (roughly double the price if I'd used the latter). Surface detail ended up being just as good so I'll be using MJF from here on out.







Back to Paki here. Similar to my post in here, I gave it nares like a leopard seal's with muscular flaps that would have been able to clamp shut while it was fully submerged. The paws are hooves derived from the original set I made for my mesonyx figure from a few years ago, made to rock side-to-side at the ankles and wrists to allow better posing. The tail is a first-ever for me, at least in execution. I wanted it to be like my Ddorudon's segmented trunk with ball-socket pieces connecting together, but without being so 'gappy'. This time I made the tail sections have a tighter clearance and positioned the sockets and balls to allow a decent range of motion still (it's not like Pakicetus had a prehensile tail or anything). I have a similar but thinner version devised for Sinonyx, and since this worked out I have more confidence in the thinner tail design.

A few things still need tweaks before I release this on Cults3D:

1) The thighs need a relief cut at the knees to allow the shins' male joints to easily plug into the slots without needing much effort.
2) Said shins' ball-ends need to be slimmed down simultaneously to aid in this.
3) I may thicken the rear legs from the knees to the ankles to let the joints be tighter and look more natural even with the hinges/sockets.
4) The neck's ball end that plugs into the head's socket needs to be reinforced (nearly broke it trying to pop on the head).
5) You can't tell at first, but I made the ears open to the rear based on one of the reference illustrations I was using for the figure. These need to rotate to face more towards the front/sides.
6) Lastly, I need to make an opened mouth alternate head (and maybe a gripping set with a fish caught in its jaws). I might be able to use modified, scaled-down copies of Dorudon and Andrewsarchus's teeth as a starting point to match photographs of the fossils.