Black Ears: Hyena Ear Tutorial

Oh yes, the past can hurt.  But the way I see it, you can either run from it, or learn from it.

Rafiki, The Lion King

As much as I love our hyena masks, I have been itching to see them with the ears done, because I figured that would really solidify the hyena look.  I am very happy with the end-product, and they were pretty simple, both in design and execution. 

The basic outlines are made from wire coat hangers, which we untwisted and cut into shape.  Each ear has two parts: the main ear shape, and then a single wire running down the back of the ear, to give it depth.  The two pieces are held together with thermoplastic. 

The whole ear frame

The joint for the ears, to allow them to be three-dimensional.
This angle really lets you see what I mean when
I talk about using two pieces of wire to create the shape.

Once all four ears had been assembled, it was time to cover them in fabric.

We decided to do the ears with black fur on the outside and brown fabric on the inside, since that is pretty close to the cartoon:

Not QUITE brown, but close enough

 We started by laying the outer edge of the ear down on the black fabric and hot gluing a few spots down the length of the wire, and then continued to do the spot-glue method as we pulled the fabric around the wire frame, leaving an unglued lip around the entire edge:

Once the black fabric was secure, we placed the brown fabric by spot-gluing it onto the black fabric.  The final step was to take the unglued black fabric, fold it over the wire and glue it down to create a black edge on the ears.

Finished ear from behind

Finished ear from the front

The next step was attaching the ears to the heads.  We bent the wire so that it wrapped around the back of the masks, and then hot glued each wire in place.

Like so

Once all of the wires were glued, we then reinforced everything with a bunch of duct tape. (Super sophisticated, I know).

And voila!  We finally have ears on our masks!  

Banzai

Shenzi