Story Behind The 1:3 Joker by Queen Studios

Story Behind the Statue is a new blog post series to give you an insight into the making of some of Queen Studios' latest and greatest statues.

In this post, you can get a closer look at the development of the Queen Studios 1:3 scale Heath Ledger Joker statue based on the famous jail scene in the Dark Knight movie. 

INSPIRATIONS FOR THE HEATH LEDGER JOKER 

We’ve been fans of the Dark Knight Trilogy for a long time. In fact, we got started as a collectibles studio by making a 1:1 Heath Ledger Joker life-size bust as a fan piece. The fan piece gave us the confidence to get started, and we’ve been itching to make another Heath Ledger Joker collectible ever since.

CONCEPT STAGE

Before we can make any bust or statue, we need to start on the concept. After much debate, we settled on the prison scene. We chose this scene because it was a turning point in the movie. Before then, the Joker had been slowly building power plunging Gotham into Chaos. After being caught by Commissioner Gordon, the Joker sat calmly in his cell with his hands on his legs, staring forward, cracking half a smile. It was at this moment the games were really about to begin. A classic statue needs a classic scene, and we knew we had to start here!

AN EARLY LOOK AT THE HEAD SCULPT

In June 2019, we released a sneak peek of the Queen Studios 1:3 Joker that we’d been working on. We’d made a strong start with the head sculpt, and we wanted to get feedback from fans. We followed up with a poll to see how fans wanted the hair to look, sculpted or rooted. Luckily, our fans are awesome! We had a lot of responses, but there was a demand for both styles. Armed with new information, we got back to work. 

NEW YORK COMIC CON DEBUT

In July, we announced that we had chosen the prison scene. Coincidently, more studios announced similar products, so we thought it would be better to keep working on him before a large reveal.

By October, we knew people were eager to see what we had been working on, so we took a gamble and brought an early version of the Joker statue to New York Comic Con. The reaction to the statue was mixed. Fans at the show were impressed, but collectors online thought it was a huge miss. 

Criticism isn't something that we shy away from. The feedback online inspired us to keep working on The Joker. It's clear from the picture above that the hair line needed a lot of work. His vest needed to be a darker green and be tailored closer to the body. While his shirt should be looser at the top. With less than a month to go before we planned our PO, we had a lot more work to do! 

THE FINAL STATUE (ALMOST!)

Since New York Comic Con, we've made some changes to the head sculpt to make the hairline look much better. In the previous version, we were struggling to get the shape right. However, we found that if we sculpted the hairline first, we could then use this as a guide for planting the artificial hair afterwards. 

Thanks to our artists persistence and feedback from fans, the 1:3 Heath Ledger Joker statue is almost complete. We say almost complete, because we know he's still not 100%. There's still some more work we need to do on the hair, and the clothes. With your help, we know we can do it! Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below. 

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