Post 5: Clayface

I gathered that what he chiefly remembers about it is a horrible, an intensely horrible, face of crumpled linen.

—  M.R. James

Before I can make a latex face I'll need a mould, and before I can make a mould I'll need a prototype face made of clay. Now, this'll make me seem awfully sloppy but I haven't actually drawn any sketches or made any other kinds of notes when it comes to character design. Up to this point my main concern was getting a working jaw together; if that idea hadn't worked then I'd have had to go right back to the drawing board, so I didn't want to get too bogged down with designing the final look of the puppet. Because of this I went into designing the face blind.

This will explain why my first attempt came out looking like the golem of Prague sucking a lemon.

I pressed on and eventually ended up with something a bit more presentable.

Incidentally, the polystyrene egg which I used to make the actual puppet head came in a pack of three; I used one of the other two as a base for the clay.

And finally, I dumped the thing in a tub of plaster.

To be continued...