Amazing Photo Of A Free-Falling Joker Was Made Just With An Action Figure And Stuff The Artist Found In His Home

The human imagination never ceases to amaze us.

Damjan

• Published in Disney
• July 19, 2020

With coronavirus raging outside, we are confined to our homes, and the safest place on earth is now turned into a kind of prison. And that is enough to drive anyone insane. The best cure to fight the boredom is, of course, keeping ourselves busy with meaningful activities.

Many people have resorted to online courses; they are reading a lot, exercising, or working on all sorts of self-improvement. Artists are the lucky ones in this situation because they have imagination-driven minds. In those cases -the sky is the limit. 

And by the looks of how many artists are busy creating works of art and posting them online while in confinement, we are witnessing a sort of a Renaissance in the artist community. They are managing to draw inspiration from the simplest things and create astonishing works of art using just the things they find around their house.

Arjun Menon is one of those artists, and his photography project called Free Fall received a lot of attention. We can honestly say that it is well deserved.

And it is now safe to say- one man’s prison is another man’s kingdom. It just depends on our point of view.

The artist was listening to a Gorillaz number when he got the idea for this photo

One day, Arjun was listening to the number “Plastic Beach” by Gorillaz when he got this idea: the Joker falling from a tower, but without showing panic or regret. And the creation was born.

In his Instagram post, he said that he wanted to show a genuine cityscape, not too distracting, but an integral part of the composition. It is not hard to imagine how difficult it must have been to achieve while in a complete lockdown.

“I wanted to show a realistic cityscape from a dynamic angle, looking down a skyscraper. For this, the initial challenge was to identify things within my house, which would look like a tall building when looked at objectively. After a lot of brainstorming, I found my AC cover to fit the bill perfectly!”

Arjun immediately started the hunt for props

He named this composition Free Fall

Menon continued: “Now, I had one AC cover, how do I shoot multiple buildings? I eventually realized the air filters from the AC also reminded me of glass building windows. So I thought it could fill in the gaps with tiny LED lights—this could pretend to look like a believable backdrop. For the streetlights, I used LED strips. Ice trays, Bluetooth speakers, dumbbells, lampshades, etc. as these would pass for buildings far away and tadaaa, I had a set!”

He improvised with things he could find in his home: an air conditioning cover and filters could simulate a building, Bluetooth speakers, Keyboards, and dumbbells are mimicking smaller structures, rice lights, and candle LEDs for buildings and streetlights. And one of the best effects, the snow, was created with shaving cream, cornflour, and hairspray. 

The results were fantastic. The picture delivers the dark and ominous look of Gotham City. The AC filters and covers, and ice trays perfectly represent city structures. The attention to detail was incredible, so the buildings even have chimneys.

The quarantine in India is rigorous, so the artist had to work with things he could find around his house

Keyboards and ice trays, AC filters and covers, and other stuff proved to be excellent props

Arjun had some obstacles to overcome while creating the composition, mostly the scaling of objects: “The biggest challenge was placing the character in such a way that the scale matches accurately. I tried a few different positions, and after some trial and error, I got the exact perspective that matches. Attention to realistic posing helped sell the emotion of the shot—for this, and I did a lot of referencing.”

Free Fall is just a part of the series of similar compositions. His Instagram account features his recreation of the scenes from the Predator, Terminator, Batman, Bane, Killer Croc, and Wolverine. Manon says:

“Bored at home during quarantine, I started looking for subjects within my home to photograph. I have always been a big fan of my old action figures, so I thought, why not start there. I believe in the old saying ‘Limitation is the mother of creativity.’ I wanted to create worlds for my scenes with these small toys but didn’t have any miniature sets for them. As a random idea, I started looking for things within my home that would fit the scene well. And suddenly, the world opened up to me.”

He used hairspray and different types of lighting to create some effects.

Here are all the items he used to create the Free Fall

Arjun continued: “I started seeing ordinary objects in abstract ways and would break them down into design elements. These could be anything from a cheese grater to an oven or a PC cabinet. I discovered a totally new perspective to look at household objects, which was super exciting. The objective is to make the resulting images cinematic and believable, with the constraints of things already available at home and practical effects. To create worlds that these characters fit into seamlessly.”

Menon went out of his usual work here as he is a travel and automotive photographer and the creator of Art Leaves A Mark. He worked on projects in Colombia, Canada, Bolivia, Peru, and even on Antarctica, amongst many other locations. His work was published in Vogue India, Buzzfeed, and NDTV.

“Currently, in India, there is a strict lockdown in place, and hence I only have access to the few figurines that I already had around. I have only eight action figures with me, but I’m not restricting my ideas. I want my images to tell a story, so I wouldn’t mind using the same ones for multiple different concepts. These include the Terminator, the Predator, Joker, Batman, Killer Croc, Bane, and Wolverine.”

And what is his favorite fictional character? “Joker is definitely one of my most favorite characters ever. I come from a film background and I felt that Joker has one the most deeply constructed characters in the comic book universe—an agent of chaos. His motives are often very relatable, if you see things from an alternate point of view. It’s not just superficial violence or vengeance, it has more to do with social injustices and similar deep-rooted ideas.”

Arjun also created compositions with other characters:

Damjan