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My mother adores Andrew Lloyd Weber's version of Gaston Leroux's The Phanton of the Opera. She even liked the Gerard
Butler film version. I'm jealous of how many different stage versions she's seen. The one time I saw it, the actor
(not Michael Crawford, I assure you) portrayed Erik as constantly on the verge of hysterics.
That said, many years ago I sculpted for her, as best as I could, a solid figure based on photos from her souvenir Phantom
book. Years later, the figure was somehow broken, and she sent the pieces back to me for repairs. Appalled at
the horrific job I did on the sculpture, I promised to improve upon her next one.
To make the mask, originally I cast the front half of Erik's head, cast it in resin, then sculpted a mask in Super Sculpey
over that and baked it. Unfortunately there were several problems with this: resin shrinks 10% when curing, the
resin I used was apparently old and kept leaving puddles of oily stuff when heated, and the Super Sculpey didn't retain its
position at all, but splayed the mask out like a skydiver and cured that way. Then shattered when I attempted to fix
that.
So, much as I didn't want to, I had to sculpt the mask directly over the vinyl head with Magic Sculp and take great care
to remove it at different drying stages. When fully cured, Magic Sculp stays on tightly, which is how I usually
prefer it, but not this time.
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As luck would have it, a good friend with more spare bodies and body parts lying around than I can imagine happened to
have a tuxedoed character lying around and donated it to my cause. He even had a base for a Phantom action figure (Lon
Chaney's version, I think), so I got that for free.
All I needed to do was horribly deform the doll's face, create a removable mask, and create an open, "singing" mouth.
Rather than dremel away chunks of vinyl to make the deformities, I opted for "prosthetic makeup" in the form of Magic Sculp
made to look like the open wounds, boils, and other nasties on Erik's face.
I did need to dremel away some of his hair on the deformed side to make room for more nasties. The original mouth
was dremeled away into a full hole in the face. From there I built up the lips into an "oh" position so he could
hold his note forever.
The mask was rendered removable, yet staying in place, by a special glue I bought a long time ago at a model train show.
Sold in tiny bottles for a lot of money, it remains tacky. At the time it was called "Moveable Miniatures Glue."
Mother tells me that the mask now won't stay on, even though it had stayed on just fine for me, but who knows?
If wondering which doll came with a tuxedo - unless you've already recognized who was cast as the Phantom this time
- then you're right, it is Timothy Dalton as Erik. Sideshow Toys had him as part of their James Bond line, and I made
him part of the Andrew Lloyd Weber line. Minus the gun and martini glass.
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