Super-Duper War Elephants

BELOW: Recently I bought, in an op shop, the hard plastic, hollow African war elephant at right. The one at left I got a while back as part of a swap from fellow collector and wargamer, Bob. It is the same elephant but with an added howdah and jewelry. I placed a couple of 54mm figures on it. I think Bob intended to use his elephant with his fantasy army to be like the ones in Lord of the Rings.

   Below is a hard plastic wooly mammoth I have done some work on. He is dwarfed by the previous elephants.

   Even smaller is my ancients war elephant. It was an African elephant, but I cut the ears down to make it resemble an Indian elephant. The rider in the howdah is a cheapo ancient Greek and the mahout is a converted Disney Bambam.

 My intention, with the wooly elephant, was to put a howdah on it and man it with Hillmen (my Viking-type warriors).

  The enormous African elephants I showed, at top, would usually be too big to consider for 1/32 as they are closer to 1/24 however, there is a lot of leeway in fantasy. Rather than make them into Lord of the Rings elephants, with multiple pairs of tusks I would like to make them into wooly mammoths, but 'super-duper' sized ones. That would involve adding hair, extending the tusks and trimming the ears. Now what would be the best and cheapest way to simulate hair? Maybe I could use dolls hair, flock, putty and so on, I figure that putty would be potentially expensive and thicken up the elephant too much.