Making Make-Up Step #1 - Tea And Torture
Ok for almost two months I had anxiously been awaiting this day - my first chance to really get my hands dirty and the first steps towards actually producing a real prosthetic make-up (or so I hope). Because, of course, before you can make a make-up you need a face on which to put it. Enter the willing victim - err I mean volunteer.
Just so you know - no Kisas were actually harmed during making of this life mask.
Spent most of the morning getting everything ready - laying out tools, measuring alginate, cutting plaster bandages and so forth. About 11 I went out to pick up last minute supplies and to go get Kisa.
The day turned out quite blustery with lots of light powdery snow getting whipped about. Just enough to make driving a little iffy but not enough that people weren't out and about. Damn it, that's what I get for teasing the Seedlings about how nice and green it was up here in the "Great White North".
Was glad to see that Audrey's was open. Had been a little worried that I wouldn't be able to get a bald cap (at least until Kisa told me that Hardy Har Hars downtown probably had some). The lady at Audrey's wanted to know why I was out "in such a storm". When I explained that I was taking a SFX make-up course she more or less offered me a position at the store for next year's Halloween rush. Yeah!
Kisa and I made it back to my house in one piece. Showed her some behind the scenes stuff on one of Dad's Farscape DVDs that more or less show the casting process. Sara arrived (she would be my assistant) and we had lunch then got down to work.
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Here's Kisa with a bald cap on to protect
her hair as well as my make-shift barber's cape, which in a previous life
had been an old table cloth, to protect the rest of her. After trimming
the cap I applied Vaseline to her eyebrows and whatever other hair was
still showing.
Then came the fun bit. |
| Here I am applying alginate (which is a casting material derived from seaweed) to Kisa's face. We used cooler water to stretch out the setting time so Kisa ended up with a rather cold 'facial'. |  |
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Alginate is very goopy and as it sets turns very rubbery. Sara and I kept breaking into giggles because of how strange it all looked. I would turn around to get some more alginate out of the bowl and when I looked back poor Kisa had developed nose and earsicles! |
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Alginate is great for making finely detailed casts. The only
problem is that it's a little too flexible. If you tried to fill a
straight alginate mold with plaster, the weight of the plaster would
distort the alginate so much that you'd end up with a more or less useless
life mask - it would no longer match the features of the person you were
casting.
So to fix this you need to apply a stronger material to back up the alginate - in this case a layer of plaster bandage. The bandages are applied after the alginate has set but before it is removed from the face. |
| After Kisa had been under the 'stuff' for about 30 minutes, Sara decided it would be funny to draw on the outside of the plaster mold. I give you the 'artist' at work....... |
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..... and her creepy Michael Myers-esque work. Although
technically those are supposed to be 'anime style' eyes. Too bad we
couldn't find my black marker.
After this is was time to 'demold' Kisa and use the fresh mold to make her plaster 'double'. |
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And here is the end result. Unfortunately, although the face
part turned out great, we ended up with some unshapely 'dents' in the
forehead area so I really should do it over. Kisa has been gracious enough
to volunteer to go under the 'gunk' again.
It's really amazing how fine the details are that get picked up by the alginate. You can't really see it in the pic but if you had the mask up close you'd be able to see not only the eyelashes and the tiny folds in the eyelids but also the creases in the lips. |
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More pics to follow when I do Step 2 - Molding the features!
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