>>6990671I cheated a little on the skull, first. There exists a crude 3D scan of the original Andrewsarchus skull free to download online (forgot where, just google around) which I painstakingly reverse-engineered the shape of. The teeth don’t show up well in the scan, so I had to try and replicate them based on numerous photos online from all sorts of angles (molars were tricky).
The lower jaw was based on some hypothetical designs others have drawn in 2D with teeth included. The rest of this skeleton is based on the mesonychid Sinonyx scaled up and made a bit more robust (Chest is a little deeper than Sinonyx’s proportionally).
Basically, though, find a 3D design program and start fiddling with it. Learn how to use it along with getting test-prints of your designs from 3D printing sites like Shapeways or Sculpteo.
Some advice on Shapeways’s nylon:
1) Make things hollow whenever possible to cut cost of material used, and keep walls at 1.5mm to 2mm thick. Nylon is pretty rigid in that range and can support itself rather well as a result.
2) For sockets, make the inner diameters 1mm less than the ball end while allowing a wide enough entrance for the ball to enter.
3) Use relief cuts to allow thick nylon to flex for attaching joints, pegs, etc. Use 1mm thick cuts that go deep to allow the part’s hole/ socket to flex, wider cuts for socket with only 2mm thick walls.
3) Make sockets like petals on a flower with the socket only attached to the body at its bottom. This allows the ‘petals’ the ability to flex freely.
4) Similarly, you can reverse this concept and make ball ends hollow with a petal-like appearance that flexes to fit into a solid socket.
