 Hi there! It's DJ B and welcome to part one of the three-part tutorial series on my drastic custom fjord. In this segment I will be dremeling, sanding, and heat repositioning the original plastic briar. I started with a reference image of a long-maid fjord. If you haven't watched the introductory video I recommend that you would. It explains a little bit of the background of why I chose this project. I hope you enjoy the first part of this tutorial. This photograph was really beautifully executed and it captured my attention immediately and I knew right away that I had to make a custom out of it. So I made sure to have good reference. I knew that I wanted to make the standing fjord just as the photograph showed. So then I went to picking a model and I actually picked a model in relation to the confirmation of a fjord horse. So I didn't just go out and pick any model I actually picked one that looked very similar. And so if we compare the model to the fjord horse they have a very similar top line and muscle structure in the body. So the confirmation is practically the same. If you were to stand off the mane of this model and put on a roached mane it would look just like a fjord as it is. So that's important when picking the model is that you don't have to do a ton of work and I didn't want to completely resculpt something. I wanted to make this a resculpt but not insanely drastic. So I made sure to print off all my reference photos and some color examples for the painting process. I'm going to use a sharpie to just mark off exactly what I want to cut because I'm going to be making this model into a standing fjord. I need to make specific cuts in the legs and the hip joints to bend accordingly. So we need to move this entire hip joint back so that the leg is standing underneath the horse a little more. It's too far forward at this point. So in order to do this we actually have to cut the entire hip so around the flank area and the butt as well as creating an indent on the foot so that I can move the foot up. You want to take plastic away from where you're moving the joint to. So the front of the hoof is actually where we can take the most plastic if I'm moving the hoof up. Now with the shoulder as well this shoulder needs to be pushed back. It's too far forward. The horse is extending at this point so it needs to be pulled back. The second leg is actually okay so all the joints in that front standing leg need to be pushed out. I'm going to make a cut at the elbow as well as the knee and the fetlock again. So just standing those out so that they're able to be pushed in the proper direction. I'm going to take off the entire neck and shave off the hair on the face as well as modify some to the eye. I'm going to also cut out the back hoof just to change the positioning but the leg stance is all right. We need to fill the air hole. I'm going to be cutting off the entire tail as well so the model's all ready to go. Here I have my little dremel set up. I have my newer ring light and my dremel with a flex shaft and I'm going to be using a variety of tools on the end of my dremel for this process but the flex shaft makes it really easy to dremel. I'm going to be using the dremel cutting wheel as well as sanding drums in both quarter and half inch size. I'm also going to make sure I have good safety equipment in respirator, some nitrile gloves and some safety glasses. So here I'm just going to town on the forelock portion on the face so I have to be really careful not to wreck sculpture that I want to keep original. So you have to be really delicate with the process and not go too fast. You can kind of see I don't let the plastic ball up too much when I'm dremeling because it gets too hot and that's when problems arise. You kind of want to do short small strokes. I'm not trying to sand off the eye so I'm being really careful and changing the position of the model is really important to get at the particular angles that you're reaching for. Then I'm going to sand off the nose. Same thing being careful not to take off too much of the face because I want to incorporate new sculpture on the muzzle but not entirely. So here we can see that I've sanded off the snout down to a point where it would be good to re-sculpt nostrils. Then for the joints I don't actually use a cutting wheel. I'm going to use this quarter inch sanding drum. I find it is better. It's a smoother and it's easier to control. So I'm just sanding into that fat lock removing all of the little hair detailing on the back and the same in all of the joint areas just creating a dent. I'm holding the dremel at this point because I'm creating a pretty deep crevice in the leg but you just want to take out enough plastic so that when you bend that leg there's somewhere for that leg to go. The same with the elbow joint just taking out some plastic there. And then once we're all done you can see here that the face has been sanded off, the leg has been sanded in all of the areas where it needs to be bent and the legs that don't need any work are okay. I like to cut off the ears and do intricate details with a hacksaw. And the reason I like the hacksaw a little more is just that there's more control. Here I'm not using a vise so it's a little difficult. The model moves around a lot but for the ear it doesn't take much as you can see it just came right off. So I'm going to do this the same with the tail because the tail's in a tricky spot and I find sometimes using the dremel cutting wheel I take too much plastic off and I wreck too much of the sculpture and it ends up being too much of a pain to deal with. So sometimes using the hacksaw is just easier and better and you can see you could do a whole custom using the hacksaw as well. You don't need a dremel setup if you can't have that or require that in your house. So eventually I did give up and use the cutting wheel because it was taking too long. I also went to cut off the head using that cutting wheel and the neck as well. Sometimes I like to leave the head on so that I can sculpt the model while it's intact but for this case I just chopped the head off because I was going to give him a new neck. So there the tail came off after lots more cutting and hacksawing just trying to not wreck the butt of the model. And then I'm also going to cut off the neck using the dremel cutting wheel. You see there's a lot of smoke that's produced from dremeling here. And I like to pick off the little bits that show up after dremeling with my gloves on because when they're still hot they come off really easy. So here I am actually cutting the hip and shoulder joints with the cutting wheel. This is really difficult. You have to be really careful not to nick the legs or any part of the model that you don't want sliced and going slow and in sections instead of one continuous movement. So it takes some figuration depending where your model's legs are and sometimes you will nick them and that's okay because you can fill them in later. It's just easiest if you try to avoid that in the beginning initial stages of your custom. The less work the better. Normally you can tell that the hip is fully cut if you can bend it a little bit. You can see me wiggling it around and just pushing off those plastic bits while they're still warm. And so then after your bits have been cut off and your hip joints and everything have been sliced you can clean stuff up with the sanding drum just to make everything a little smooth. The less sanding you have to do manually the better and so using the dremel really helps to refine some of those edges. So here there is some excess main left over so I'm dremeling that off as well. It's over top of the shoulder and then we have our final model that has been dremeled to the point of perfection here so you can see that the head is good and so everything is awesome. Then I'm going to clean up my workstation and just vacuum up all of those plastic bits and dust that has sprayed all over the room. And I'm going to bring out the heat gun. This is my embossing tool that I use as a heat gun. It's not very strong. It's a little stronger than a hairdryer. It works really well. So you're just going to put that joint in that heat gun when it warms up not too close not too far. You will bubble the plastic if you put it too close and you're going to want to test it. And so wearing these nitrile gloves really helps because you can't burn yourself very easily. And so here you can see me bending but not pushing too hard. You don't want to snap the plastic so you want to go with the give of it. It's a feel thing and you want to be testing your model on a flat surface as much as possible. For moving this hip joint same kind of thing you're going to dremel the upper portion of the model and just pull that joint out. So here you can see me slowly bending that hip back slowly and steadily it may need more heat so just adding heat applying pressure and seeing what I can create without bubbling. And then you can hold the model in position and dunk it in cold water which will set the plastic. So that's my little base self-container in the back there. It's full of cold water. So it's a lot of readjusting and going slow and moving as you see fit. So here you can see me dunk that in the water. This takes a lot of work and a lot of time and it's a slow process. So here I noticed that I can't move that shoulder joint back because there's too much plastic in the way. So I haven't cut big enough gap so that the shoulder can move in. So I went and dremeled that out and then I actually have room to push that shoulder joint backwards. So that's really important too is creating gaps so that your joints can move into position. And so I'm still learning how to do this fully. It's still a learning process and it definitely is a lot of trial and error. So you will learn and pick up those things in bending the legs. And in this drastic custom I didn't struggle with the legs a little bit and I'm still learning how to do that properly. It comes over time. So moving the leg I start with the elbow joint and then move to the knee and to the foot. So you move it in succession. You wouldn't want to start with the foot first if you're not going to know where the foot's going to end up. So you want to move down the leg. And I did end up mashing the hoof quite a bit. It was too hot and it morphed quite a lot so you have to be careful not to put too much heat. So once I feel like it's good I realized that the leg was way too long. It wasn't working for me so I ended up strumbling it off. I'm going to wire reinforce it back together. So sanding down all of the seams and edges of that leg and then I'm going to be able to put wire in and make it match accurately. So sometimes that's how I find is easier because I'm not super good at recreating the legs. So here I'm going to be doing that to the foot as well because that fetlock isn't quite the right shape so I want to dremel it off and reposition it. So here I'm just drilling in some holes and those holes will later hold wire to reinforce. This has been part one of the three-part tutorial series on the drastic custom fjord. This has been deconstructing the model from the original plastic. Thank you so much for watching and look out for part two and three of this tutorial series. In the next part we will be reconstructing the model to create the original one-of-a-kind piece that we were creating for this drastic custom. If you have any questions of any kind feel free to comment. All of the tools that I used in this video are going to be linked in the description below. Be sure to subscribe and like this video. You can follow me on Instagram and Facebook at DGB Studios.