The Pattern

Now that the pattern was secured it was time for the next hurdle. The sculpt was done in 1:12 scale. Each inch equaled a foot. This needed to get much larger.

I had a few options:
Manually scale the pattern up -yeah right
Use a computer to do the heavy lifting. Bingo!

Now the question is: Do I use a home scanner and a graphics program to scale the pattern or capitalize on some free time at work? I went with the work option as my students were taking tests. I digitized the patterns into the computer and scaled them up 200% in the pattern design software before truing the seams.

This took a few trail runs to finesse the pattern but once the corners were square and the seams matched I printed out a paper model to test the look. After the first paper model I realized I need more definition in the mouth and patterned a larger lower lip. All of the angles were set to be very sharp. This was to compensate for the drastically swelled look of the future inflatable.

The second pass was created in paper. At this point the model is in 1:6 scale. You can also see the lines drawn for additional seams in the full-scale model.