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.

CODE NAME: PROJECT MURRAY PART 1

The initial idea for this project came to me when I came across a life cast of Bill Murray from the motion picture "Scrooged" (1988). This is prefect timing because his facial structure from this movie was in between Ghost Busters (1984) and Ghost Buster 2 (1989).

In order to make this into a life size stand-up I would need to make it into a full head with the eyes open. A mold would need to be made so I could brush in liquid clay. Once the clay hardened I could then sculpt the eyes open and add the sides and back of the head.

First step in molding Mr. Murray's face was choosing which material I wanted to mold it out of. Since the original piece is a hard urethane plastic I decided to make the mold out of Smooth-On Rebound 25. Rebound 25 is a thicker platinum silicone that can be brushed on in layers to make a nice durable mold.

Once the Rebound 25 has cured for 16 hours I then made a shell that would cover the whole silicone area to allow the mold to keep its shape once the original piece is removed from the mold. This was made by mixing automotive body filler with fiberglass resin to produce a more "liquid" filler that could be brushed on to the silicone mold. Once that has hardened up I would then cover the filler with fiberglass cloth and resin to ensure a strong shell.

Once everything has cured over night it was ready to de-mold. Once the original piece is removed I then trimmed up any rough edges. Now I have a perfect mold to brush in the clay so that I can make all the need changes.

Stay tuned, more to come.

CODE NAME: PROJECT MURRAY

So usually when I post photos on facebook I put them in a folder with some strange name that hints around what I am making without straight out telling you. One folder in question is titled "So be good, for goodness' sake! Whoa, somebody's coming". Right here, and right now Im gonna tell you what that is all about. As some of you know I had a press booth at Phoenix Comicon 2011 which I had a full stand-up silicone 1:1 Joker from The Dark Knight. It was such a hit that I wanted to build another stand-up, one bigger and better. Then came the idea of a 1:1 silicone Peter Venkman from Ghost busters with equipment and all. I will only be updating this project from here so stay tuned for updates... Whoa, somebody's coming....