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BUILD HISTORY: 9ART Harley Quinn

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  • darklord1967
    Persistent Member
    • Mar 27, 2008
    • 1550

    BUILD HISTORY: 9ART Harley Quinn

    From the moment Harley Quinn made her debut as The Joker’s moll in BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES back in 1992, she was an instant hit with fans! What was only supposed to be a one-appearance debut became a recurring character that has endured to this day.

    I could not, in good conscience, avoid creating a 9ART 1:9 scaled Harley Quinn custom figure as part of my LEGENDS OF GOTHAM CITY series.

    I need to mention at the outset that while I am very familiar with the fact that Harley Quinn’s look has changed radically over the years (in various mediums) since her introduction, it is only her original court jester-themed look that I most appreciate and had any interest in creating as a custom figure.



    HEAD SCULPT

    I was absolutely THRILLED to see that a shrunken version of the 1:6 scaled Hot Toys Harley Quinn head sculpt had been created within the MEGO community to work in the 1:9 scale. As beautiful and expressive as that sculpt was, I was so relieved that I would not have to go through the finger-achin’ drudgery of creating my own sculpt for my custom figure.

    At least, that's what I thought. Turns out I was wrong… well... sort of.

    With the specific details I hoped to incorporate in my custom figure, I quickly discovered that the shrunken Hot Toys sculpt would only be the STARTING POINT for the head I would use on my 9ART custom Harley. But there would be no avoiding some long painstaking work on the head for what I intended.







    I knew from the very beginning that I wanted to convert the jester hood and head tails sculpted details (which were solid resin details on the Hot Toys sculpt shrink) into cloth appliances. I also wanted Harley’s face mask to be a separate appliance. There were two reasons for this: One, I felt a separate face mask appliance would make for finer detail on the figure… and two, because believe it or not, I’m SO LAZY about performing certain chores (like painstakingly painting a clean domino mask that is part of a face sculpt). I would much rather just (go to the even greater trouble to) create the face mask as a separate little appliance which allows me to paint it separately before attaching it to the face sculpt.

    Of course, the prescription of NO sculpted jester hood and tails and NO domino face mask meant that I had to very carefully sculpt away those details by hand so that I could end up with a “clean” version of the sculpt, free of those details.

    My fingers kept seizing up as I performed this sculpt work (armed with nothing more than a simple X-Acto blade). As a result, this process took about 3 days (getting old sucks! I do not recommend it). In the end, I ended up with a completely bald and maskless psychotically grinning Harleen Quinzel!









    I created a suitable face mask pattern and cut it from very thin plastic.




    I was reasonably pleased with the look of Harley’s overall face when I completed most of the paint detailing and performed a preliminary fit of her tiny face mask









    COSTUME:

    Big kudos to our friends at Figures Toy Company for creating the most excellent unitard body suit for their Harley Quinn figure. These tights are created in the complex red and black “jester” checkered pattern established by the character on the animated show. FTC went the extra mile to create the pattern by using separate black and red stretch fabrics stitched together when they could far more easily have just created the checkered pattern via (less impressive) silkscreening.

    FTC created three versions of this jester costume in two different material types:

    The “standard” type unitard was fabricated from basic stretch nylon…




    … and the Excelsior Store exclusive Harley Quinn figure’s tights which were made from a “metallic wet look” stretch fabric.




    After much personal deliberation, I opted to go with the metallic stretch tights for use on my custom figure. I made this choice for two reasons: Firstly, I thought the metallic stretch tights looked far richer than the simple stretch nylon version. Secondly , I actually preferred the positioning of the checker assembly pattern on the metallic bodysuit over the nylon version when viewed on the female form:

    On the nylon body suit, the junction for the four quadrants of black and red checker cut horizontally low across the figure’s tummy.

    On the metallic stretch suit version, the checker junction cut horizontally much higher along the upper rib cage, flattering the athletic female form a LOT more.



    I wanted something closer in size and shape to the small jester bib that Harley is seen wearing on the Animated series. So I created my own pattern and fashioned the final garment using white silk charmeuse, thin satin ribbon for the neck portion, and puffy white pom-poms taken directly from the Figure’s Toy Company figure.




    Since my 9ART “Athletic Female” body is designed to stand anywhere from 6.7” to 7” in height…
    … and since my 9ART female features completely different arms and legs from a standard MEGO or FTC female...

    ... the FTC bodysuit (designed to fit a nearly 8” tall female body) and the head hood covering with tails were going to require some major tailoring modifications if they were going to fit correctly. I also needed the bodysuit to have a much more form fitted tailoring upon my custom female body for a proper look upon the figure. After a few hours playing with potential adjustment patterns, I finally came up with a fit that I was very satisfied with.

    WRIST CUFFS:

    As excellent as the FTC Harley Quinn bodysuits were fashioned to be, none of them featured court jester-styled wrist cuffs that were accurate to the equipment featured on Harley’s Animated Series costume.


    I searched high and low in the world of dolls and action figures, and could not find the correct oval zig-zag pattern wrist cuffs ANYWHERE… not made of cloth, and not in an appropriate size for a 1:9 scale figure. I noticed that a few customizers who have created custom action figure versions of Harley Quinn have elected to just omit the wrist cuff details altogether. As tempted as I was to do just that, in the end, I just could not do it. Without those wrist cuffs, Harley Quinn just did not look fully dressed to me.

    I decided to 3D render my own wrist cuffs, and produce them as resin prints for Harley to wear.






    WEAPON ACCESSORIES

    I armed custom Harley Quinn with two basic weapons accessories:

    The first accessory, a pop cork gun, was a parts bin acquisition that required no adjustments on my part. The origin of this accessory is unknown to me.





    The second accessory, Harley’s Giant Mallet was not something I could kit-bash from anywhere because it did not seem to exist anywhere I looked.

    I did 3D renders of the various components of the big mallet, 3D printed them all in high detail resin, then painted and assembled them all into the final accessory prop.












    I amused myself with a small inside joke: I created the handle grip for Harley’s giant mallet using a parts bin find of handle grips from a discarded set of HARLEY Davidson motorcycle handle bars.



    Digital mock up of box packaging: Layout by darklord1967





    Character file card: Art by Terry Dodson & Rachel Dodson. Digital alterations by darklord1967. Written text by darklord1967




    I hope you'll enjoy the FINISHED 9ART HARLEY QUINN CUSTOM ACTION FIGURE HERE!


    .
    Last edited by darklord1967; Jul 25, '21, 7:33 PM.
    I... am an action figure customizer
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