Tutorial: Applying Hair to a 1/6 Head (Rambo + Daryl Dixon)

I'm FAR from an expert at applying hair, this is only my third attempt. Still - for those who were in the same boat as me a couple of months ago and really wanting to try this out, I thought I might be able to offer some tips to get you started... just things that I've discovered along the way.

Update: The (mostly) finished result of the heads in this tutorial

The process...

First, grind the resin hair away from whatever head you're using. I used a dremel with a cutting disc to grind it away and put the groove along the middle of the head which will become the part in the hair. You need to imagine where his natural bald head would be underneath all that resin hair. If you misjudge and leave too much sculpted hair on there... it will look crap and you'll have to grind it off and start again. That's why this is my third attempt at applying hair and not my second... grrr.

I normally paint over the exposed resin but for this one I just used a sharpie to lay down some black on the bare resin.. this helps if the hair is a little thin to make sure you're not seeing the resin underneath. So use whatever colour paint you need here to match the hair.

I followed the same basic hair tutorial that you see here: https://morezmore.wordpress.com/2015/06/19/water-lily-part-5-hair/
Just a warning - there's a naked lady (figure) in the pictures.

I use Tibetan Lamb's Wool purchased from MorezMore. You can get different colours and all the tools / glues you need from their ebay store.

To start, I run a bead of Fabri-tac in a line on a piece of glass.
Then, as in the tutorial above, I start laying down the pieces of hair pressing the ends with a toothpick.
Once you have completed a line, you need to run another line of glue over the hair following the first line. This gives you glue on both sides.

The next step is important - use something (I used the toothpick) to hold down on the hair close to the glue line. Then, wet your fingers, and press down on the glue line rolling your finger off the hair and onto the glass. Go along the entire line doing this.
What you're doing is pressing the glue flat and making sure it covers all of the roots of the hair. Make sure you keep wetting your fingers on a damp rag, wiping off any glue that gets on them as you go. The Fabri-Tac is tacky!

After you're done and it's dry, you can use a razor blade scraper to scrape along under the glue line and take off the hair.
Use some sharp scissors to cut away the excess and leave enough glue on the roots of the hair to hold it all together. You'll get something looking like this (but in a longer line obviously):

For applying the actual hair to the head, I use a different glue called Gem-Tac. It's less goopy and dries nice and clear. It's also much thinner and runnier which is helpful to hide any excess glue on the hair.
Take the top off the Gem-Tac bottle, dip in a toothpick, and apply some glue on the back of the actual hair piece where there is already glue. You're basically just going over the glue that's already on the hair.
Then press it on to the head!

Keep working up, don't make your gaps too large... you will see the bare scalp underneath if you do. You need to keep the lines reasonable close here.
This is I think the third line of hair to bring me up to this height:

One from the front:

It's easy to cut off whatever size pieces you need from the hair lines.
Then you can fill in any gaps.

Notice that I'm leaving the edges of the hair line around the face. I won't be using the glued lines here, I'll actually be trying to glue the hair straight onto the heads for a more natural looking finish. The glued lines are really just for the mass of hair at the back and sides - you still need to finish the critical parts by hand.

Now for the part.

I start by getting some large tufts and using the Fabri-Tac to apply glue to the tips of the roots.
Then wet your fingers and start squeezing and shaping those ends like you see in the picture. I make them quite flat and square so they fit into the slot I carved in the head.

I ran out a couple of hours ago and got this handy movable clamp thing.... It's basically a soldering station. You can find them cheap on ebay, sometimes called a 'third hand' or something similar.
I tried holding the glued pieces in place last night while the glue dried and it just wasn't working... I shake, move, get tired... This clamp solves it. Definitely get one if you're going to try it!

Second tuft of hair for the part going in now

And that's where I'm up to. I'll post more pics soon when I get a little further along. For now, hopefully these tips give someone else the courage to have a go.

Ok, sorry for the terrible phone pictures but it's all I've got handy when I'm working on this.
The hair part is completed and now I'm using my wife's hair pins to hold the hair back and start working on the sides of the temple and forehead.

The entire forehead will be hidden by his headband so I haven't worried about making this area too pretty - the hair under here is mainly put there so that it can fold over the top of the headband and fall down over his eyes. There's easier ways that this could be achieved but the technique I'm using is a new one so I want to try it out first to see how it looks (and at least it won't matter to the final product).

Starting with the sideburns, take a tuft of hair and stick it in the third hand clamp. get things positioned how you want it and then trim the hair with some sharp scissors into the angle that you need (so that the roots of the hair sit flush on the area you want them, with the hairs running in the direction you need them).
The glue that I'm using (Gem-Tac) is actually quite flexible when it's semi-dry so you can actually bend the hairs down into the direction that you want them after it tacks which gives you a larger margin of error.

I tried Zebraten's tip of wetting the ends of the hair before applying glue and it definitely helped to contain the strands before applying glue.
Put the glue just on the very tips of the hairs with a toothpick. Don't smother it, the glue is strong and you don't need too much to hold the hairs in place. I probably have too much on the ones in these photos. Push the clamp assembly up to the head and leave it there to set.

Move along the temple adding more tufts into place. The hair that's held back with the hair clips will fall down over the hair that's being glued up now, but by gluing these tufts right onto the head just by the tips it gives the hairline a neater appearance where you see it. This is why less glue is more... but my guess is I might need to actually thin the glue that I'm using a little so that it's easier to work with. Like I said, I'm trying something new here but I'll see how it looks after it's all done.

Ok, continuing on...

After you've added the hair around the temple, you end up with this crazy puff of hair going in all directions. It's MUCH thicker than the final product, there's a lot of bulk to come out during the thinning / cutting stage.

I cut up an old motorcycle neck warmer and put it on his head as a temporary headband just to kind of see where it's at... I wet the hair a little and this is what it looked like.

Next, thoroughly wet the hair, part it where you want it, and place a little hair-tie on his head to kind of hold it down in place while it dries. I find it helps when it comes time to start cutting his hair, it just behaves itself a little more.
For this hair tie I used one that my wife bought for my 2 year old daughter's hair. No idea what they're called or where to find them, but they're a good size for this.

There's a hell of a lot of hair to come out when I thin it, but even so my first impressions are that I didn't take off enough scalp and the hair will be too high. If that's the case, I'll chalk this up to a learning experience and start over (again). The tutorial still stands as the process is the same, but the end product may not be useable. We'll have to wait and see when he's finished.

To carry on though, I have been working on Daryl Dixon in tandem but I hadn't been taking photos.
Seeing as I'm up to the same stage as Rambo, I thought some extra pics would be helpful.

This is the MG Toys head which comes with horrible synthetic hair. The good thing is that the hair is glued into a cap which can be removed and worked on. I stripped all the old hair and glued on the lambs wool using the same method as for Rambo.

Here is the head without the cap/wig attached. I also took the chance to paint a little blood and dirt on his face while it was off.

And here, I put the cap back on his head - this is how the hair looks before anything is done to it. Puffy, crazy and nothing like the final product. The hair will be thinned down to remove some bulk and obviously cut to it's final length over several incremental stages.

Wet down the hair under the tap and take a look at where you're at. I'm happy with the part, the hair is sitting nicely on his head (not too high, not too low) so I can move on.

I think I would normally start thinning the hair all over but I was in the mood to mess with his fringe... Daryl has a lot of strands that kind of hang down around his face. I use a bit of water and a toothpick to kind of separate out the strands that will be hanging down over his face.
You don't want to cut lots of strands at a time. The hair will naturally stick together and form thick strands. Use the toothpick to scrape down from the roots of the hair, down the face, separating those strands as you go into smaller strands.

You want to cut these smaller strands at slightly different lengths which will help with the realism later on. Use the toothpick to pull out one of those separated strands so that you can cut it with sharp scissors. Cut it on a bit of an angle (not straight across) to give it a nice taper on the face. During the final stages these will all be cut again to their final lengths, but doing a little now I find helps me to better judge what needs to happen to the rest of the hair.

Keep looking at your reference picture - and don't cut it too short yet. Hair at this scale doesn't quite fall the same as hair at human scale, so you need to allow for the how the hair will hang. You'll only know this by playing around with it and making sure you take off the hair incrementally.
After 3 or 4 cuts, it's starting to take some form of shape at the front there.

It was late at this stage so I wet his hair again and put on one of the clear hair ties to hold it down while it dries.

With characters like Darly Dixon and Rambo their hair is sweaty, dirty, bloody and greasy so it's pretty easy to add gel or wax to the hair to make it behave and it still looks fine.
A character with clean, washed hair all needing to sit in a perfectly formed style is completely beyond my skills at this point so for a beginner I recommend going for a rugged character.

Not sure when I'll get another chance to work on these, but I'll update the thread when I do.

***** Update - sorry, it's been a loooong long time I know. The heads have been sitting in a drawer but I pulled out an old Kaustic Plastik body which seems like it will work well with the Rambo head and decided to do a test fit.
I haven't done anything more with the hair here other than spray it with water for the pictures which approximated how it will look once styled with gel. Hopefully these images can give you an idea where the figure is heading when I get around to working on it some more. Sorry again for the lack of updates!

**** Final update.
Had a chance to trim the hair and get these close to done. This is pretty much where I'll leave the hair, held in place with some gel and hair spray. Hope this tutorial helped a some fellow beginners to make a start.

Tutorial: Applying Hair to a 1/6 Head (Rambo + Daryl Dixon)

pukingdog

Top Contributors this Month

Recommended Communities