Face To Face With The Joker Part 2: Diamonds.

Week two takes us into my faux pas, and yes... more casting and how the prince of crime became a regular part of the family!

The first thing I wanted to do was to get the permanent basics in to place.  Snapping off the make- shift ears was the first step.

I had a go at trying to make them from fimo and then from clay, but they didn't sit right.

They either looked pinned or BIG! then they would fall off.

''How can I get a realistic looking ears??''

PING! The lightbulb in my head was lit!

Off to the packet of moulding material.

YES; it says to wear gloves...

BUT there was no big X in an orange box, upside down fish or sad looking trees anywhere on the packet, just as long as I didn't ingest it, it should be cool...

To be honest, it smells kinda nice, was like using a face mask. (feel free to insert,  something about Mary Joke here if you see fit...) except the setting tickles a little... but all in all not an unpleasant experience by far.

I never realised how different my ears are until the cast was made.

I had his ears!!! these fitted perfectly in size, matched the facial material and could be attached using glue.

Now to get the damn thing to balance!?.

This was created by making a cast of a cylinder and using stone powder again.

The clay I added helped for temporary support but I wanted him to have a shirt and bootlace tie so wouldn't work in the long run to build around.

Multi-purpose glue was used to attach the head to the neck and created the correct support and shape to work with.

There we are!! starting to feel like I was getting somewhere.

Painted his lips and hair, again... temporary,  just to help me along with a vision to the final product.

I was liking it but it wasn't quite right...

I sent it off to Doc and Rod Keith.

Doc hit the nail on the head straight away with: HE LOOKS TOO NICE!!...

He did, Doc was right!! apart from the paint he didn't really look like the Joker?

So I messed a little more with the painting.

Joker soon became a regular feature around the house.
So much so, I had kids knocking on the door to ask if they could come in and see him!

My son and his friends would let on to him... and say Hi! and Bye!!, all in all it was quite amusing.

He was being used in games, I wouldn't tell the kids where he was in or around the house... and they and Batman would hunt him down and bring him to justice!! 

Mr J was even given a hot-dog by my neighbour at a BBQ!!

                                  He was living it large baby!!

SO... apart from hangin' with friends and the family... what to do with him?

It didn't matter how much I wanted to believe that paint could sort out my problem, it couldn't.

Gill said to Doc- ''Argh... HE IS TOO NICE, what do I do?? I can't start over as it would be far to costly''.

Doc said to Gill- ''Tilt Him forward, get him to look through his brows as much as possible''.

So off I went to the Tilt!!

From here I started to work on the sculpt of his coat using nylon enforced clay and added extra height and body to his hair, painted over the eyes and lips.
They were distracting as he should have been looking up, no longer straight ahead.

It was starting to work!! it looked better, but still not quite what I wanted.

Most of you reading this will probably know geek message board poster Mr Sinister (Sin)?.

We were chatting late one night and he let me sound off to him. 

Deep down I was pretty gutted that it wasn't working the way I wanted.

In my head I pictured a first appearance Joker...

Sins words were wise.

He told me: ''To carry on and not give up on it, as it was THE JOKER but how I personally see him being, nobody Else's... as long as I worked to what I believe the character to be like it could not be wrong.''

I held this as my mantra.

Though the tilt was better, I wasn't satisfied, he had to be modified facially and his intial coat scrapped.

I gave it a few weeks, sat on my ideas and come back to it fresh so it wasn't a chore and feel like I HAD to complete it.

This helped lots... and from there it was whey hey hey! ALL the way!

Next Week: Clubs!