Wax Figure Making Process
In over one or more sittings, a highly skilled sculptor from Madame Tussauds Studios who is given direct access to the celebrity will record the colours of the hair and eyes, and over 500 precise body measurements are referenced. Most important is to capture the look of the celebrity in order to reflect the personality of each unique individual. The next task is to make a clay model of the head and body which is used to create a mould. Wax cast of the head and hands are made from the mould, and the eyes are inserted. Each eye is hand-painted to achieve a perfect match of the original. Real human hair is then inserted painstakingly strand by strand.
The head and hands are coloured using a blend of oil, water and acrylic colour. From the mould, the body is cast in fibreglass, and the head and hands are fitted to the fiberglass body and dressed in clothes that are often donated by the celebrity. The pose, clothes and expression on the face all contribute to making the figure as realistic as possible. The whole process usually takes up to six months by a team of 20 people to create and cost about HK$1 million each.
Read more about this topic: Madame Tussauds Hong Kong
Famous quotes containing the words wax, figure, making and/or process:
“the young men who watch us from the curbs:
They hold the glaze of wonder in their stare
Our crooked backs, hands fetid as old herbs,
The tallow eyes, wax face, the foreign hair!”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“The quality of American life is an insult to the possibilities of human growth ... the pollution of American space, with gadgetry and cars and TV and box architecture, brutalizes the senses, making gray neurotics of most of us, and perverse spiritual athletes and strident self-transcenders of the best of us.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“[Wellesley College] is about as meaningful to the educational process in America as a perfume factory is to the national economy.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)