Joker's M76 for The Dark Knight

Back in the day when I used to dress up as the Joker for comic con's and Halloween I wanted a prop that I could carry around with me. Now I figured most people dressing up would choose a knife or a joker card, but I wanted something a little more unique. I chose his gun from the street truck scene, the M76. I first researched as much as I could of the weapon saving every picture I came across so I could eventually make a blueprint of it.

I then figured out which materials I wanted to use to make this prop and designed a few templates to be laser cut. Not going to go into the details of the build as this was several years ago, but I'll show you some pictures and you will get the idea. Thanks for looking and enjoy.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We are tonight's entertainment!

Back in 2008 The Dark Knight was released in the theaters and I had decided I wanted to do a tribute costume of late Heath Ledger's version of the Joker. The costume was completed in time for Halloween of 2008 and everything went great, nothing but positive responses. Well come 2011 I wanted to do something a little different with the Joker. As I had already purchased table space at Phoenix Comicon I knew this costume had to come out again. So I knew the costume by itself wound not bring that much attention to my booth. So I thought about it, and whats better than a life size full realistic Joker from The Dark Knight?

A few years prior to this I had it in my head that one day I would want to built a stand up to display this costume so I ended up purchasing a urethane resin Joker bust from a company called Howard S. Studios. The down side to this bust was that it had sculpted hair and it was a hard resin, by no means life like. Once I had received it I started to paint it and was not happy the way it was turning out, so it was shelved for a year and a half. Which brings us to our current time.

Unfortunately I did not take a picture of what the bust looked like unpainted but I do have a few of what it looked like before I gave up painting it the first time.

 

*** IMPORTANT INFO: I DO NOT CONDONE RECASTING FOR PROFIT, ONLY FOR THE GOOD OF THE PROP. ONLY ONE CAST WAS MADE OF THIS BUST AND THE MOLD WAS DESTROYED ***

The first step in changing this bust was to strip off the paint so that when a new mold was made I could capture all the detail of the sculpt without the paint interfering.

Since the final piece would have punched hair in place of the sculpted hair I had to find a way to remove the hair but keep the shape of the head. In order to do this I filled the hollow resin bust with expandable foam.

Once fully cured I took several different tools (dremel, grinder, palm sander, and a table sander) and sanded off the hair and the partial ear that was sculpted.

Now that all the hair is removed I sealed the foam with Smooth On Smooth Cast 320. Then I applied body filler to help sculpt the final shape of the head.

The only thing missing at this point is to sculpt a set of ears and attached them to the bust and then it can be set up to be remolded.

To get this ready to be molded I added some clay to certain areas to hide any seems that could be seen and added a clay barrier around the bottom where I wanted the mold to stop.

Next blog will show the molding process.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We are tonight's entertainment! Part 2

In molding the bust I decided to use Smooth On Rebound 25. This silicone can be brushed on in several coats to make a nice thick mold without wasting rubber.

Areas under the nose and behind the ears had a thicker silicone added to allow final piece to be removed from the mold easier. Also a seam line was formed on the back which is where the mold will be cut to removed the final cast.

The last step before the outer shell is made is to add some key locks to the mold so that it locks into the shell perfectly every time. In this picture they are the round domes on the forehead, back of head and neck.

First step in building the outer shell was to build a frame around the entire bust.

 

Next i mixed up a Body filler/fiberglass resin mix that I could spread over the silicone mold to create a hard shell that I could then cover in fiberglass.

Once everything has dried completely I then pulled it all apart, cut the seam and pulled the original out.

 

Next step is to bolt everything back up and add a layer of clay about 3/8" thick on the inside of the entire mold. This is done so you can pour a inner skull that will go inside the final piece so you dont have a solid thick silicone head.

Once the clay up was finished I poured in more expanding foam. Let it cure for an hour and then pulled it all apart again. Scrapped out all the clay and the bolted everything back together, sprayed mold release and poured the new silicone head. For this I used Smooth On Dragon Skin.

As soon as the Dragon Skin cured I pulled the mold all apart again, removed the expanding foam skull and then placed the new silicone head back in the mold without the expanding foam skull. Then I poured more expanding foam into the mold with a piece of PVC pipe that would act as the neck on the stand-up.

Once fully cured, this guy was finally done and ready for eyes, paint and hair.

Next blog will be the final chapter with paint and hair and the full body.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We are tonight's entertainment! Part 3

Now that I have a perfect pull I can go ahead and clean up any seams and trim out the eyes. Glass eyes will be added to the bust to give it a sense of realism.

Once the eyes are fitted, I popped them back out and moved on to the next step... painting. Now because this is silicone you cant just paint it with regular paints. Basically you have to paint it with pigmented thinned down silicone. For this I used Smooth On Silc Pig silicone pigments mixed with Smooth On Psycho Paint and then thinned down with toluene so I could run it through an airbrush.

Even though the Joker has make-up on I wanted to paint the natural skin tones just in case you could see it through the make-up. I did several layers of pinks, browns and yellows to achieve the final result.

Now before I paint on the make-up stages I wanted to test fit everything on the mannequin to make sure it had the stance and positioning that I wanted. The mannequin was all custom made so he could be posed like a scene out of the movie.

Now on to painting the make-up. Unfortunately I did not take pics of this process, but it was pretty much the same as doing the skin tones except that I did not use an airbrush. The make-up was all painted on by brush and different texture sponges.

Once all the paint was dry I inserted the eyes back in and then it was off to hair. The hair used was a synthetic blend that matched the texture of real hair. The hair was glued starting from the back up to about 2 inches from the part.

If the hair was glued too close to the part it would not have a realistic look to to it, so to finish it up it had to be all hand punched, hair by hair. This process took about 2 weeks to complete.

 

Now all that was left was to cut, style and color the hair, then assemble it all on the mannequin. This was all finished the night before it had to be delivered to convention center for Phoenix Comicon 2011. It was a huge hit and I cant wait to show off my next stand-up at Phoenix Comicon 2012.