Ever saddled a Bear?

[montaa]

Crazy people, gamers and the rest of you, I am in need of assistance. I need to saddle some bears, with Dwarves.

I picked up a great set of bears here on BTown and have been working on them for a good deal of time. Did some research into coloring, shading, etc.

But now I want to turn them into Bear Cavalry. I have my riders ready to go, Dwarves with vicious looking pike/halbards, but I havent any legs.

My question is: Where do I find 20 pairs of dwarven riding legs to put on my saddles to complete the modeling stage of the project?

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Whilst searching for ideas, this had to be shared: (nothing to do with riding bears) http://bp0.blogger.com/_UWy_4PRn824/R29 ... G_1235.JPG

[Shirokuma]

As remarkable as this may seem, I have actually saddled six bears for dwarves in the past. It was for a D&D campaign I ran that extensively used miniatures, and bears were the heavy cavalry mounts for my "Mineguard".

For those conversions I used Ral Partha dwarves that were lead (this was the mid-80's!), so the legs were easily bent. Also, GW dwarves have the stuntiest legs ever! Other than making a green stuff sculpts; or a green stuff master then making a mold to cast the riders legs in resin for yourself, I'm not sure of the most expedient for your needs.

You might, depending on the size of the bears, want to put some type of "basket" on the bears' back, much like were used for elephants (or Oliphants/Mamaluks, in the LotR), and have ye olde dwarves standing, rather than sitting. Then all you need to construct are the baskets, and the dwarves just plop in with a variety of weapons available to them in their little box.

[Lormax]

For the legs, could you maybe use a human knights legs and cut out part of the leg itself then reattach it, shortening it up? It may not be stocky enough so some greenstuffing may be required, but it's gotta be better than sculpting the whole thing from scratch.