My Batman Bust

Click all pictures to enlarge.

Okay, so technically this is not film-related but since Batman has been committed to film in the past (most recently in what could be argued as one of the best movies of 2008), I figured it was close enough. I've had a couple of people asking me to put pictures of this thing up on the Internet whenever I got it back and I am doing just that. 

This is my Batman Bust. I made for my Basic Design II class. It took a really freaking long time. The assignment was to make an organic, three-dimensional object using found art. I formed Batman's frame work out of chicken wire I cut and wound together. I then stapled the wire frame to a wooden base with a staple gun. After taping some newspaper to certain parts of the head for emphasis (some in his nose and in the mask ears), I covered him in Rigid Wrap Plaster, which is basically the same stuff that they make an arm cast out of. I then meticulously cut up and glued twenty-dollars worth of comic books that I bought from Heroes and Dreams to the hardened plaster frame. This took incredibly long because I cut the comic book pieces out really small to give Batman more detail and to make sure you couldn't really tell what made them up. I used darker toned panels for his mask and outfit and lighter, more skin-toned panels for his face. I just used random printer paper for his eyes. The process of cutting and glueing all this comic paper to his head took a total of 13 hours (over a two day period- 8 one day and 5 the other). If you look carefully, there are three occasions where I put a piece of comic paper showing Batman's actual face in the piece (look over the nose for the most obvious one). I tried to be sneaky with this because I didn't want it to be too distracting. After I glued all the paper to the frame, I painted the wooden base black.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. I've never constructed anything in my life so it's cool to have made something physical that is three-dimensional. Plus, I made freaking Batman. How cool is that.

Thanks to Thomas Webb for taking all these pictures.

You can see some of the detailed panels I used in this picture.

Close on his face- you can see that I actually put panels under his nose. Also, I like that my Joker mini-bust is out of focus in the background.

Nice side profile shot. Yes, that's a biohazard bag off to the left. That's a story for another day.

The front side of him head on. You can see my Joker mini-bust better here.

I just changed this to my Facebook profile picture. Because this is guaranteed to get me some ladies. Right?

That's it, folks. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. I'm just glad to put this thing behind me. It was a lot of work. Still, I'm happy with the way it turned out.