Finished most of the details at this point. So here are some pictures of just that!

Somethin' Brewin'

 I'm finally at a point where I think I'll be able to afford the materials to make masks on a regular basis and sell on ebay just in time for Halloween!

This mask is my interpretation of The Mask from the original comicbook, it's a 3/4 head mask so no neck.

I still have detailing to do, but it's mostly sculpted at this point.

Shrunken Head.

 Not much to say... so here are some pictures.

Latex Painting and Hair Punching 101 (really and not really, respectivly)

 He's been painted! The paints so far have just been Skin Illustrator pigments, I may or may not add some airbrushing with specially formulated airbrush paint, I'll have to sit with it for a little while and see what I like.

 Here is the beginning of two things, stitching and hair-punching. Starting out, I need to say a huge, mind boggling thank-you to my friend Martha, (deviant here: http://snartha.deviantart.com/) she grew her dreads out for a while, and eventually cut them off, and didn't know what to do with them, so she sent them to me for whatever I could come up with. Hair on it's own is kind of a funny thing to find, but real dreads are the rarest of the rare and honestly would be useless to few others. So again, thank you to MJ.

Hair punching is literally punching hair with a tool into whatever skin material you have, be it latex, foam, gelatin, or silicone. Technique varies based on the material, but the principal is all the same, use a tool to jam the hair in, in certain cases, glue on the other side. I'm not an expert in the subject for any material, but work by those who are is stunning to see, and watch being done.

Mold Pouring and Latex 101

Look at this! So, Latex, right... that stuff, I had to actually remember how to make it work the way I needed it to, and to again, have patience with materials that need to DRY. (dope slap's Mac from the past.)

ANYWAY, Latex in small amounts is an effective makeup material, it can be used for aging, small cuts and creating wrinkles. But it can also be used as an agent for the Halloween masks.

So once I finished my mold I poured about 1 cup of latex into it, and rolled it around inside. then filled the rest of it. I had a few little leaks but those sealed themselves quickly enough.  The latex was allowed to dry over about 24 hours.

The leaks create an edge around the mold called 'flashing'. This needs to be cut off the newly formed and dried latex head, but this can create a seam, which needs to be filled with a glue of some kind, in order to make a smooth edge.

Here is the head stuffed with cotton! still needs seaming, but this is the culmination of months of saving, scrimping and planning, it really means a lot to me to have this little freak of a head.

Mold Making 101 (not really)

 I know that some of the two of you who watch this may know how all this is done, as you learned it with me, or from the same course, but some may not...

Molds are deceptively simple, they just require a certain kind of thinking. The big idea is to encase the object into a solid surface that will take it's impression, and then be able to open that solid surface whenever you want.

On a simple two part mold this is easy enough to do, by building a wall around the shape that you have created or want to make a replica of.

Then using some kind of plaster like material cover one half of the shape. It is important to keep a sharp edge between the wall that you made, and the shape you want to reproduce, this will help with seaming in the future (I'll discuss this in a future post).

 This image is of the head half done, there's a few things to point out here, I have removed my original wall that haloed the sculpt, and there are some 'dots' in the wall. These are called 'keys' and allow the two parts of the mold to fit together perfectly after it is made, so if it taken apart and put back together multiple times it'll still fit together easily and the same way every time.

The last step is to cover the opposite side in the plaster, the first half of the mold acts as the wall that was originally placed around the sculpt this time. Also I added two pry points into the mold giving me the option to poke something in to them and pull the mold apart if need be.

In a future post, I'll talk about some of the more troublesome aspects of mold making, like undercuts and seaming.

Getting Ready

 Hey! I'm back!

so in my life after my paying jobs... I have finally been able to get some plaster, and latex, so that I will be able to cast and pour my shrunken head!

I am VERY busy the next few days without much ability to cast the head in earnest, I still need to get some items that'll are required for casting it (bowls and the like). But I'm hoping by this time next week I'll be able to get what I need to make it all happen.

These pics or of the head in it's current state. I decided to get a few wrinkles on him just to add some character.