I developed the figurehead in Blender, as I haven’t been able to understand how to work in the sculpt environment in Fusion 360.
The legs were relatively easy, just a matter of drawing the outline as they intersect with the plane of the ship’s stem. Then I built the rounded form out.
For the head and body, I used the reference images to find contours and borders. Working from those, it was a matter of building the form out, vertex by vertex, face by face.
After several restarts, I ended up with the best shape I could.
I included the shape of the ship’s stem in the 3D environment, to confirm that the figurehead would work with the actual dimensions of the model.
The final 3D printed part was so small that many of the details of the 3D model were lost. Oh well. I painted and glued on the pieces.
It could be reasonably argued that using carved wood or clay or something else would have produced a better result, but I’m satisfied with my work here.
