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That whole Ralph Hanley thing was silly. Must I state that Ralph had his own show called
The Greatest America Hero? Believe it or not, he did.
Another commissioned piece, but a fun one. I'd wanted to make my own Ralph Hinkley for some time, but couldn't
find it (the time) until paid to. Here Ralph is wearing his after-work clothes. For some reason my client
didn't want him in his schoolteacher outfit.
I rented the movie "House," and rather than watch it all the way through for the 15th time, I took screenshots of William
Katt's face. The early scene where he's at a booksigning was great for closeups. I'm not saying that this
resulted in a perfect likeness, but my client was pleased.
The cape was its own project, of course. I decided to use very thin floral wire inside of the red trim to provide
just a little posability. The cape consisted of two pieces of black cotton fabric (the thin, nonstretchy, $1-a-yard
kind) sandwiching the red trim along the edge. Again, I just folded cotton fabric in half rather than use piping.
The neat thing about the cheapo cotton I used is that water works nicely as an "iron." That is, you can wet the fabric
and then fold/crease it pretty effectively. I always use stretchy materials for the clothing, but for accessories like
a cape or belt, thin, stiff cotton works nicely.
After a failed attempt at making the chest emblem out of glossy, red sticker material, I cobbled one together using
a primitive graphics program (the kind you download for trial periods) and printed the chest, belt, and base logos.
I have an ink color printer, so I admit that I used my old company's laser printer to print the one page in color. Now
I work at a place that's ridiculously strict about color printing (I think Congress has to vote on it), so there goes future
printouts.
Ralph's supersuit did not allow him to remove his own head. I send in-progress pics to my clients and often try
to have fun with them.
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