Pee-Wee's Big Adventure Clown

Yeah, somebody wanted it real bad, way too rich for my blood, it was from liveauctioneers.com,, the same site that sold the one back in January PWF posted about on the first page, don't know why they ran a live auction on Ebay, I guess they thought it would get better attention, even looks like they used the same photos, so you really don't know what the actual condition is.
 
Back in January it was listed in excellent, near mint condition. This time it was listed as only very good. Something must have happened to it!
 
Using the faux fur that I found, I cut out some new hair for the clown. I also bought some paint for the skin tone. I chose "Creme Orange" from Montana. It's a shade lighter than what is on my clown and appears to have a little more orange than that on the movie clown. I thought it was a good compromise though.

new_clown_hair.jpg DSCN9121.JPG DSCN9116.JPG
 
PeeWeeFan said:
I chose "Creme Orange" from Montana. It's a shade lighter than what is on my clown and appears to have a little more orange than that on the movie clown. I thought it was a good compromise though.

View attachment 511304
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Creme Orange looks like a pretty good match in the photo to me. Thanks for the tip. I have another project I'm working on that that might work for.
 
Back from vacation, looking forward to more clown work!

To start, yes I am the maniac who bought that live auction clown the other week. That was the most I was willing to pay, which I rationalized since I got my first clown for peanuts (plus not that much higher than what it sold for last January). I'll surely resell it eventually (how many clowns does one need?), but in the short term I didn't mind paying up to get another one for studying and mold-making. Main purposes for it will be measuring accurate base dimensions, and making proper bucks for vacuum-forming from the insides of the head and shoes.

I got my grass carpet in and it looks great. Need to tack that on to the base next, then sew on the black collar trim. Pom poms got delayed, but finally shipped out today. Machining the mechanical parts will be the next big task, but luckily I have access to all the tools at Tech Shop here to do that.

On a side note, I had a buddy grab frame captures of all the clown scenes in the PWBA Blu-ray .. so I'll see about posting some of those for high-def references.

Tally ho!
 
Hope you had a good vacation, DB! Welcome back!

Wow, so you are the lucky winner of the clown. At that cost, there was no way I personally could rationalize it, but I'm glad it went to someone here on the clown thread! It will be nice to know the exact dimensions of the base and any other variances in build.

Looking forward to the hi-def screen captures.
 
Duckbutt said:
To start, yes I am the maniac who bought that live auction clown the other week. That was the most I was willing to pay, which I rationalized since I got my first clown for peanuts (plus not that much higher than what it sold for last January).
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I didn't think the bid price was bad for as nice as it is, DB. I was worried about what the packing and freight shipping would do to the cost. Just glad it went to you or someone in the thread who'll appreciate it. CONGRATS!
 
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Thanks! I'm still waiting on the shipping quote, we'll see. My other clown wasn't too bad, and I had to pay a company to go pick it up from the seller before packing and shipping.

I have access to a professional vacuum forming machine at our local Tech Shop (besides lots of other expensive tools) .. so if I can get bucks made from the head/shoes, I'll be able to crank them out all day long. I'm assuming Ultracal with release agent will do the trick, but I'm going to do a lot of experimenting first.

PeeWeeFan - Did you ever get that wig mentioned earlier? Just curious if that worked out at all. Also - do you think these older clowns had a different head/neck shape? The newer clown heads look fatter, but it might just be an illusion since the necks are more hidden and the hair is less puffy (I notice my clown's head looked more correct after I took the suit and collar off). I might make my clown skinnier in the midsection too .. the older ones definitely don't seem as rotund.
 
Duckbutt said:
PeeWeeFan - Did you ever get that wig mentioned earlier? Just curious if that worked out at all. Also - do you think these older clowns had a different head/neck shape? The newer clown heads look fatter, but it might just be an illusion since the necks are more hidden and the hair is less puffy (I notice my clown's head looked more correct after I took the suit and collar off). I might make my clown skinnier in the midsection too .. the older ones definitely don't seem as rotund.
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I did get the wig that was mentioned earlier. It does not look nearly as good in person as in the photos! Definitely not a match. It was the same type of material as on the Pennywise clown - cheap! The faux hair that I cut out is correct for the production clown though, same material. The color is not quite right, but I'm happy with it to give my clown a restoration. I can't imagine the heads being any different between the older and newer clowns. I think part of it is just the paint job. The only difference that I see could be the neck may be longer on the older ones.
 
Too bad about the wig. I got my pom-poms in the other day, so this weekend my goals are to make the wooden frame for the upper body, and make the suit modifications. Stretch goal to measure specs for the mechanical parts and make a trip to the local metal supplier.

Still waiting on a shipping quote for the other clown, so no updates there. Maybe I can get the body of the clown ready before it arrives ..
 
I did get an opportunity to get some clown painting done. My wife actually did the majority of it - she's a better painter! My only regret is that I used a sandable primer. The surface came out with a little more texture than I like. But overall, I thought it turned out well. When the humidity drops, I will apply a clear coat.

painted_clown1.jpg painted_clown3.jpg painted_clown2.jpg Comparison.jpg
 
Cool! What colors/brands did you use? The skin color especially looks great, I figured that one might take some trial and error to match. I agree a good shiny clear coat will help finish it off.

Regarding the hair - what made you think it could be insulation? I agree the texture is similar, although I would be surprised to see that used for real.
 
I originally used the spray paint that I bought, but it did not cover very well. So, I went to Lowe's over the weekend and bought some regular house paint. The skin color is Valspar -Sand Swept (2005-2B). The blue above the eyes is Apple Barrel brand - Cobalt Blue. The red is Apple Barrel brand - Red Apple. The pink is Americana brand - Baby Pink. I used a super wide Sharpie paint pen to do the outline around the white. It seemed to work really well, giving a nice consistent line width.

I originally considered that the hair could be fiberglass, but I pretty much disregarded that idea due to its itchy properties. When my wife was helping paint some of the head, she remarked, "why did they use insulation for the hair?" That made me think that it may have actually been insulation! Being a prop, anything is possible. Insulation would certainly be easy to "style" as it was on the evil clown. The color is consistent for some insulation, especially the type found in insulated duct work. Not sure that I would want to use it on my clown though!
 
On my clown, it looks like the outline around the face was hand-painted, but everything else was sprayed. The original clowns have super tight lines on everything .. I've been assuming they had stencils for each feature and the outline. Which always gets me wondering how to make stencils for all that (seems very tricky with all the curvature - perhaps it could be done by cutting into a spare face).

Not a lot of updates on my clown this week. I'm lining up materials to machine and weld the mechanicals this weekend hopefully - I'm sure it will be lots of trial and error. My wife is actually stapling on the new base carpet too. Oiling the sewing machine to start working on the collar trim eventually. Picked up a jigsaw to cut out the circular part of the torso. I'm thinking of making it a little skinnier than mine - the original clowns seem less rotund to me.
 
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Duckbutt said:
On my clown, it looks like the outline around the face was hand-painted, but everything else was sprayed. The original clowns have super tight lines on everything .. I've been assuming they had stencils for each feature and the outline. Which always gets me wondering how to make stencils for all that (seems very tricky with all the curvature - perhaps it could be done by cutting into a spare face).
Click to expand...

If you look at one of the pictures of the clown that appeared on YouTube, half the face is shifted from center. A machine may actually have sprayed some of the features on. Not sure how a person could have done it.

offset clown.jpg
 
Yep .. my assumption was that it's a stencil but manually placed and sprayed. I didn't notice the other features in that pic being shifted too besides the eye .. maybe they stencil each half separately then. How I wish we could track someone down that knows more history on these things ..
 
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