Not long after seeing the freaky Batgirl I decided to turn her into the Harlequin, aka Duela Dent, formerly known as the Joker's Daughter (or Two-Face's Daughter, or...).  Batgirl's cheesy grin really made her the ideal base for this figure.

I began by cutting off Batgirl's hair and then dremelling down the back of her head until it was small enough for her new hair to fit.  I then used an exacto to cut down the glove spikes and to trim the boots down into something I could reshape into Duela's.  After all this cutting, I used Milliput to smooth out my cuts.  Then I sculpted new boots using Kneadatite.  She was then left to cure overnight.

Finding her new hair proved to be a challenge.  Much of my control art featured hair akin to that of the Joker's during the silver age.  It was short, curly and looked challenging to sculpt and get to look right.  Meanwhile some fan art, as well as some images from her more recent appearances, featured hair that looked more akin to the Jean Grey hair.  Chip suggested I go ahead and try it.  One of the hardest things about this custom was getting Jean Grey's hair -- I ended up using the hair off my old Total Justice Black Canary custom as I have been planning on updating her anyway with longer hair.  It was hard to rip from her body, and I ended up having to submerge the head in boiling water before it would budge.

Once the new hair was in place I started painting.  Chip suggested I mask off the diamond pattern, but I was determined to try it by hand first.  It was perhaps the hardest paint job we've done yet, but at least thank god it wasn't red and yellow.

Finally, I made the ruff (her collar) from paper.   Originally I was gonna make a "rough draft" from paper, then transfer my pattern to a transparency plastic, but after seeing how the paper looked when folded I decided that I'd never get the plastic to fold that way.  Making the ruff required a bit of geometric thinking, but once I wrapped my head around the geometry it was easy.

See Also:  Teen Titans