Modifying his lip sneer to an upper lip curl

I am only partially into this mod, so I will updated it with a video of the effect when it is finished. But here are some notes to get you started:

The upper lip is separated into two halves. The sneer movement only moves the left half up and down very quickly.

The right side could move the entire range along with the left side, except for two things: There is a stop on the plastic bracket that goes along the top of the mouth, and the two halves are not connected together. The lever which is connected to the motor only moves the left lip, while the right lip only moves a little from the skin scretching. There is a spring around the right half axel which helps it return to normal.

So, to convert the mechanism to move both sides of the upper lip together, you need to remove the stop and fix the two halves together. So, when the motor lifts the left lip, the right lip moves the same amount.

You should be able to do this mod without removing the skin from your Elvis. At worst, you will need to unglue the upper lip only.

The bracket with the stop on it is the grey plastic bar that is going across the lip in the picture above. It is held on with two screws. It also holds down the axels for the levers, so you must be careful when removing it.

Thankfully, the skin is very loose around the mouth and you can just stretch the skin and get your screwdriver in there. Remove the two screws and pull the bracket out.

You should be able to see where I cut the stop off this bracket. These pictures are from my first attempt on the skinless bust, but I repeated the steps with my fully-skinned Elvis, as well. During that time, I actually broke the bracket while trying to cut the stop off. I found it didn't really matter because the only important part of the bracket is the area with the screws. This holds the axels in place. The bar across the top is only for the stop.

Now, the second part of this mod involves securing the two halves together. I attempted to do this without removing the glue from the upper lip skin and it didn't work. So, you will probably have to do that. Place hot glue across the two white levers as far back as you can to make them move together. I still need to finish this part and will update with a short video when I get the chance.

I may find that I need to remove the spring on the right axel. This should still be possible from the front without removing the skin, but will be a little more difficult because I will need to take the axel out.

Finally, there is a slight curl in the skin of the upper left lip that is molded in. That may reduce the visual effect of this mod somewhat. It may be possible to heat the skin up and stretch it carefully to remove the curl. Also, the lever mechanism might not be able to lift the lips very high. In the picture above where I have the left lip all the way up, I am doing that with my fingers on the lever and the motor removed. So, the actual effect will be more subtle. My almost-glued-together attempt does make it look a little more natural while he is speaking and doing the li[ sneer.  I think with the proper timing of the animation, it will add much detail to his lip syncing, even if it is subtle. The upper lip on the human face doesn't really move around very much while speaking normally. But, there are some sounds where it can, and of course smiling/frowning will have exaggerated movements in the lips.

A smile/frown mod will hopefully be coming soon. :)

I will be doing lots of experiments with his lips and mouth because this is the area that he seems to need the most improvement. His jaw motion is just too puppet-like.

What do you guys think of this? No, my Elvis does not look like this.... yet. It is a mask.

I think the mouth and teeth would be very difficult and require alot of mods. But, that's the fun, right? The eyebrows would have to be amplified to move more, and crunch the entire forehead.

I was thinking Iron-Man, too, but he has no face movements (unless you just make a mask that flips up and Robert Downey Jr.'s face is animated.

Neo from The Matrix probably wouldn't be so difficult. And then there is Frankenstein. :)

I also ordered the mask in the picture above. I am not sure that I can use it as-is (most likely not) but I should be able to at least use it to take molds from.

What I would really like to do is figure out a way to be able to attach different skins, so I can try out all of the ideas and more that I posted up above.

I am committed financially, now (about $50 in parts) so even though I am probably getting in over my head with this one, I will plug away at it.

Besides, it's the Hulk!! :) My favorite character. It has to be worth a try.

Removing Elvis' hair

I was going to need to get inside the back of the head to pull out the eyes for the coming eye mod, so I decided to see what was involved in removing the hair. It was much more difficult than I had bargained for, but I think one step was my biggest mistake that lead to it taking me so long.

This is the result after cleanup

I didn't grab pictures of the wig removal, but essentially, it is glued down at the base of his neck. The wig consists of netting with hair tied to it. Pull it up from where it is glued down until you get to the hair line. There you will find that it is sewn to the scalp wth heavy threads. I used a pair of small scissors to just cut the threads as I peeled the hair over. Then I pulled the threads out.

This picture didn't really come out well. It is almost uncanny how life-like he looks with the hair removed. Replacing his eyebrows would seal the deal, in my opinion.

The hair consists of two parts. The wig, which is the bulk of his hair, and a separate piece along his hairline that is punched into the skin just like the sideburns.

This is where I messed up, I think. The hair is really long and I was worried that it would be difficult to see what I was doing, so I cut it shorter. I think my mistake was that I cut it too short. This made pulling the rest out very difficult.

That's one funky hair style!

Anyway, after cutting the hair, I just started pulling it out just like I did with the side burns. It took a pretty long time to do it, and the hardest parts were at the temples, because of the contours. Longer hair here probably would have been easier to grip.

As you can see, it makes a mess. So be sure to do it where you can clean up easily.

Just for the heck of it, I tried the wig on him after removing the hairline piece. If it were positioned properly and glued down, it might not look so bad. And you should be able to cut and style it easier without dealing with that partition between the wig and hairline.

Looking back, I would have found it easier just to have just pulled up the skin on the forehead and pulled the hair out from behind. Or at least not cut his hair so short before pulling from the front. I found that low temp hot glue works well for glueing the skin back down.

After this mod, I am fairly satisfied that he doesn't really look like Elvis anymore. Just put a wig of your choice on him and style it how you like. Also, you could try some facial hair to really distance him from his original persona. If done properly, a goatee would hide his slightly curled lip. You may even be able to use the hair you pulled out, if you pulled it out from behind. I think if you threaded the hair into a big sewing needle and punched it through the skin from behind, then glued it and cut it, it would look like it was meant to be there. I am sure that would be a great deal of work, though. You could always just try a fake mustache and goatee.

I also trimmed his eyelashes with a pair of small scissors and plucked out stray hairs in his eyebrows with tweezers to finish it off.

Now if I could just figure out how to remove that dark tint around his eyes...

Very cool, Jax, thanks for giving us that tip!

Alright, now someone give your Elvis a goatee! Or even better, rip off those ugly eyebrows and use his sideburn hair to make them look more realistic.

BTW, I was playing around with the placement of the wig yesterday and I think I might be able to use it for the Hulk. I need to cut it a little shorter and find some way to clump it without making it sticky. Do you think some type of wax would work?

Also, Jax, do you know what material the Elvis skin is made out of? It looks and feels, to me, like a polyurethane maybe.

GWJax,

I want to clarify your instructions regarding hair insertion:

First, you are pushing the sharp end of the needle into a dowel, and the eye part will become your tool.

Next, when you thread the hair through the needle, you are going to make it somewhat even with the middle. Then you punch it through from the front, and slide your needle off the hair from one side. This leaves two tufts of hair coming out of the hole and middle of them are behind the skin. Then you just glue or melt the middle section behind the skin to hold it in place.

Does this sound correct? If you get some time in the near future, would you mind showing your tools and just one insertion so we can all see?

Oh, and also, I just realized that with your terminator, since you don't need the eyelid on the one side at all, you could use that motor channel for something else. To be totally realistic, you would probably want to use it to control a mechanical iris in the eyes like the real terminator, but that would be very difficult to do, I think. :) Maybe the channel could control the LED or make the LED move closer or further from the tip of the eye. This would increase or decrease the size of the red pupil. Just some ideas that I thought while removing the eyes from the mechanism.

Thanks.