Connecting the Head!

This is were I messed up! 

I believed to connect the head to the neck I could drill a hole in the top and bottom of the head and run a piece of K+S through the head and be able to connect the neck to that K+S. I thought that epoxying the K+S to the top of the head would make it secure. I realised this would not happen, due to the fact how hollow the head was and how little fast cast was at the top of the head! 

Therefore I needed to find another way of securing head to the neck!

Not something I wanted to do close to the end of building the puppet.

However

After talking to Andy, my lecturer (Who was a huge help with this ENTIRE project!!)  we both thought about cutting a section off the top of the head, placing K+S inside and securing it to the bottom of the head.

Its quite hard for me to explain so I'll show it all in pictures :) 

So I started with marking out where I would cut the head open

Once marked I began cutting in to it. I used a dremel, and used the cutting wheel tool, although some areas were quite thin, some had thick areas of fast cast that my cutting tool couldn't reach therefore I also had to use the sanding bit and sand the opening.

This was only some of the fast cast 'sawdust'

The head was now cut open and I could begin trying to make a section where the neck could slot in to.

What I decided to do was take a piece of K+S and cover it with milliput. The milliput was used for 2 reasons.

1. The K+S had to stop halfway down the point of the milliput you see below. This was to ensure the ball joint of the neck could go inside the head.

2. The milliput acts as a bigger surface area which allows me to adhere the miliput to the fast cast. 

You can see that there are holes in the milliput, this is to allow epoxy to grip on to it when I adhere it to the head to make it more secure.

A lot of epoxy was now put on to the connection point to adhere it securely to the head. This had to be secure as possible as I didn't want this breaking off during animating. If this snapped off it would stop me animating all together! 

Head is now fully secured to the neck!
Getting close to finishing Max!