I did a lot of reading and talked to a Chewbacca costumer, since that process is very similar to what I wanted to do. They use a silicone skin, with a rigid under skull to support it and to hinge the jaw. The molds for the silicone casting are frequently made out of fiberglass, which sounded good to me. Except... I've never used fiberglass before, and therefore didn't realize that the resin I was using was old and spoiled. It never cured. So... I had to scrape and remove disgusting stinky fiberglass resin and mat from my sculpture. No pictures of this part, but it was awful. Ugh. That will show me for skipping a spot test!
I decided to make the mold out of ultracal or hydrocal instead. Except I bought the wrong stuff--hydrostone, which is not quite the same as I realized when it started setting up suddenly rather than gradually. Gah.
Much frustration later, I was able to pull apart my mold. We had to stick it in the oven to soften up the clay enough to get the life cast out, but it did work--no serious undercuts!
Then it was time to go to work brushing up the silicone mask itself. I had purchased Dragonskin from Smooth-On, as well as Thi-vex. I DID actually do a test to see if I could pigment the dragonskin with dry pigments, and I could, yay! So I pigmented it to dark brown for the nose and lips. I didn't use the Thi-vex, so I spent a lot of time brushing the dragonskin back up onto the sides and ended up with a rather uneven thickness. The ears were hollow, so after the whole thing was cured I injected thickened dragonskin into them to fill them. I ended up using a little bit less than one trial kit of dragonskin on this mask, but I need to add more to the sides behind the jaw still.
Once that was cured, I brushed in Smooth-On's Onyx to build up the underskull. I actually did this twice, once with a full face and the second time focusing on the lower part of the face with just a bit going up to the lower forehead.
After all this, I had this:
:thumbsup
