Been working on this for a couple weeks or so, especially after since my second viewing of Fury Road (that movie is perfect).
I'm talking about Nux's bird skull bobble head!
It's sculpted originally from Super Sculpey and then heavily altered later with Apoxie sculpt. Then it was cast in resin after it was all spiffy. Then cleaned and painted accordingly. Unfortunately, the mold putty I had to use shrank the skull by around 4-5% and added some distortion, so there was a lot more clean up to it than I originally hoped for. It also made the eyes look even more comically large.
The Lower jaw was a real pain. Having the most basic of hand tools, I had to hand cut, hand bend, and hand crimp the weld plate to what I think the jaw looks like. The mouth greeblies were done in a similar fashion (but out of copper) and they were all soldered together. Oxidation and rust is all real, when it came to the jaw, nature took care of the look for me.
"Eyes" were attached with resin castings of a threaded rod I had intended to cut up. After doing a lot more sawing, hacking, and cutting that I expected; I just said "Fuck it" and decided to go the easier route. The most laborious thing about this was having to drill the hole into the cast skull to fit the sanded down screws.
The spring was cut to size and soldered (sloppily, too, might I add) to the lower jaw after I drilled a hole into it. What you see in these later images, when it's crimped, is the third jaw I made. The first two were made just to get a technique down.
Looking at pictures of the real thing now, the spring is still too long and sticks too far away from the neck.
Once that was all done, I screwed the jaw to the skull to make sure it stayed and was sturdy. Cut the guide rod to size and then plopped into the plumbing coupler-thing I picked up at the hardware store (closest thing I could find), and then filled the bottom with resin.
After sanding the bottom smooth, I realized that because of how far the "neck" extends, and just how the base is, it topples over when it bobbles; so I have to hold the base to have it bobble. I was so intent on having it look like the movie that I overlooked that it might need some wider base or flange to keep steady. Once again, I have paid the price for my lack of vision.
