INVASION OF THE KEATON BATMANS!!!
CREATING THE MOVIE MASTERS BATMAN '89
Well, things have moved on a little quicker since my last work with this figure. I have moved to a process that lets me create the head and neck as one piece instead of sculpting it and smoothing it over and over again. This has always been the part of the process that scares me away from the figure altogether. I created the first figure by sculpting the cowl base as always. Here you can see our original model in progress with gauntlets and shinguards sculpted in already as well. The belt will be left to a similar process as the head/neck. Once I got things going I really got on a roll and decided this would be a good point to attack this figure with a multi-path approach. This resulted in creating 3 Keaton figures at once with more in the works waiting to be created.
A mold was made of Figure 1 down to the mid chest. that creates a lock so that the next identical figure can be placed in the mold with resin to recreate the head and neck in perfect placement on the body. The ideal of this process is to create a separate piece that can basically pin the cape in through the neck as opposed to using my customary "pull through" style cape. These 2 (Figure 1 & Figure 2) variations will use the classic pull through cape.
The same process is repeated but this time with a layer of saran wrap between the figure and resin. This doesn't interfere with the surface placement but it does allow me to work with the head and neck separately and place the cape between it and the body once assembled. Here I have the next 3 heads for figures VII, VIII, and IX.
The belt is cast from Figure 1 from a placement mold as we did with the head and neck. Figure 1 was assembled, a mold was built around the midsection and then we moved on to casting a replica belt onto Figure 2. Once the gauntlets and shin guards are sculpted on we move on to the midsection. We do actually lose some articulation in this figure. The Ab-Crunch joint is sculpted over. I place a dab of hot glue in the back of the figure locking the posture in place and let it cool. this keeps the figure from bending on me while I sculpt these abs into place. Next step is to cut a cape that will bring it all together before we go in for final painting. Below is unassembled FigureV painted uniform Semi-Flat Black.
Figure IV fully assembled with Pull Through Cape and detailed eyes.
Figure V fully assembled with Pull Through Cape and Detailed eyes.
Figure VI fully assembled with New Process Neck and Cape.
This time i decided to add the glider cape feature to the figure. As you can tell from the above photo, the wires don't show while standing, but when you go into full on glider mode...
Voila!!!
CRASHHHHH!!!
Its a pretty basic method of adding the two tubes to the cape. Its another thing to get him to hold them correctly. Luckily I buy a lot of clearance TechDeck bike stuff and I think I'll jimmy some handle bars in there to tighten the grip and keep it streamlined looking.
Figures VII VIII & IX should be Pretty F'n Awesome...
STAY TUNED!!!
by
