Hey all! Just wrapped up a project from one of my favorite games of all time and thought you'd enjoy a looksee.
I've made a Big Daddy suit and an ADAM syringe from Bioshock (both pretty early on in my propmaking learning curve and pretty rough around the edges) but recently I was asked to make a couple of the "bird" splicer masks from Rapture. These were always my favorite of the splicers, and these masks were a BLAST to make.
The more colorful mask is painted in the style of the splicers that Sander Cohen sends you to kill in the "Fort Frolic" areas of Rapture. There are only 4 of these masks in the game.
Both masks are vacuumformed .060" styrene. They're split into two bucks - the main mask and the beak section - in order to be able to be made this way. The main section of the mask is very tall and it's pretty tricky to keep the plastic from webbing when pulling the styrene.
The cracking texture was probably the most fun. Nothing complicated here - first a coat of primer, then enamel spraypint given a full 48 hours to cure. After this, the surface is painted with elmers glue where you want cracks to show up. The acrylic topcoat (white in this case) is airbrushed on top of the glue as its still damp. When the elmers cures, it shrinks and pulls the acrylic into cracked patterns like this. Thinner paint works best - thicker acrylic can stretch and keep the cracks from forming.
If you'd like to see some of the in-progress shots, the flickr album of process can be found here
I've made a Big Daddy suit and an ADAM syringe from Bioshock (both pretty early on in my propmaking learning curve and pretty rough around the edges) but recently I was asked to make a couple of the "bird" splicer masks from Rapture. These were always my favorite of the splicers, and these masks were a BLAST to make.
The more colorful mask is painted in the style of the splicers that Sander Cohen sends you to kill in the "Fort Frolic" areas of Rapture. There are only 4 of these masks in the game.
Both masks are vacuumformed .060" styrene. They're split into two bucks - the main mask and the beak section - in order to be able to be made this way. The main section of the mask is very tall and it's pretty tricky to keep the plastic from webbing when pulling the styrene.
The cracking texture was probably the most fun. Nothing complicated here - first a coat of primer, then enamel spraypint given a full 48 hours to cure. After this, the surface is painted with elmers glue where you want cracks to show up. The acrylic topcoat (white in this case) is airbrushed on top of the glue as its still damp. When the elmers cures, it shrinks and pulls the acrylic into cracked patterns like this. Thinner paint works best - thicker acrylic can stretch and keep the cracks from forming.
If you'd like to see some of the in-progress shots, the flickr album of process can be found here
