The head for this automaton came from a damaged mannequin from an exhibition
"Hollywood Costume" at the V&A in fact - it's possibly Sharon Stone or Audrey Hepburn, but I can't be sure!
Here's the rather beautifully made torso, looking like classical greek marble in the sun and azure table tennis table.
Beautifully made though this mannequin was, only the top part was needed. The head and shoulders needed to be sawn off, to leave a flat base. This is easier said than done. The main thing to get right was the marking. (Check twice, saw once!) The simplest way to get a sense of the line around the body was to use sticky tape, in this case our old friend insulation tape. Sticky, but not so sticky that it strips the paint layer off!
Another handy use for the wonder tape!
Below is the head. The body is GRP (fibreglass), so the sawdust is evil, ground glass lung-killing stuff.
The next thing to do was get some eyeholes. The sockets were to be made from deodorants as per usual.
The eyeballs were put in place to get a rough place to draw the stencils.
The orange thing is the ball mount from a manly deororant (it suggests so on the label at least)
So more crude surgery for the mannequin. Drill to the head, followed by jigsaw to cut out the sockets, ouch...
And don't they look fetching. Vaguely reminds me of the film nine http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472033/
and possibly even Fantasic Planet
https://www.google.co.uk/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi&authuser=0&q=fantastic_planet
Tremendous
Next, the rather beautiful skull needed a face, which is a cast off moulding from Twitr_janus, but cut into pieces and reapplied to fit the shape of the mannequin. As per usual this was attached with the marvellous hot glue gun. This one has a fantastic slim-bore nozzle and can be used to inject under the skin.
The rod below is glued to a bolt being fed through a restrictive passage through the throat, where a hand don't fit. Once in place it was fixed with hot glue and the rod removed
Below the shape of the face is being drawn to act as a guide for fitting the skin face on. The rest of the head was to be left blank. The face is both a real mask and a metaphorical one (if that isn't a tiny tad meta!)
On the right the monitor mount is shown attached to the mounting bolt fitted previously.
The pencil line was then covered with clear gaffer tape (clear so it could still be seen!), then the line traced with a scalpel
The tape inside the line was removed. The tape is there to protect the surrounding skull area's painwork from grubby fingers, chip, scratches and hot glue whilst working on it.
The face mask was glued on from features of the latex face mask, and offcuts streched over gaps and trimmed to fit.
And there you have it. The basic head, now with face...
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