I still haven't picked one of these up yet.
What kind of retrimming did the eyes and hair need to bring it closer to h1?
Please do give a tutorial on making it into an H1. I was thinking of picking up a second one and converting it.
Well, this is how I did it, you don't have to necessarily do it the way I do it, but this is how I got my results. However, there is a caveat. Though the mask is quite good, it is based off an H2 which drooped a bit more in the left-side of the face because it was kinda rotting, so it isn't going to look
exactly like an H1.
For reference, head on over the Michael Myers/Halloween forum. There's loads of great pics to go off of in their
gallery. I recommend looking at (not only the screen stuff, but) some of the fan made masks for better angles. The NAG section and the Handiboy/NHK(?) section were what I primarily used.
Anyway, here is what I did, and if you've got a mannequin head or something to prop the mask on and pad, it makes things a lot easier:
- First thing I did was futz with the hair. The hair is important to getting the shape of the face right. None more so important at this job is the hairline of the mask. It's okay on the mask, as is, if you're looking at it from the front, but the sides really narrow the face, I think. I looked at various stills and screenshots (predominantly, the scene when he kills Lynda with the phone chord and when he's smashing through the closet at the end) and plenty of fan made masks, and the sides looked a bit farther back than the one the mask, as is. So, I pushed the sides of the hairline back a bit. I left the part where the hair meets the ears in the same spot but from where the sides go to meet the top of the head, I pushed it back (roughly) a quarter to half an inch and even dropped down the hairline depending on some parts to get the look, but really, this is an "all to taste" kind of thing.
One note to remember, pay special attention to the left side of the mask (if you're looking at the the mask from the front), the hairline recedes a tad more at the top of the head more than the right; kinda giving it a slanted look from the front.
Also, hot glue works really well at holding the camel hair to the mask and works fairly well at coming off when you want to remove or change it. I recommend using that.
- Second thing were the eyes. Specifically, the right eye. Now, I don't know if this was on every mask but mine had a small lip near the bottom corner of the eye, where it rounds into the indentation. I don't know if this is was part of the mask sculpt itself or an unclipped area. Either way, I cut it away as well as reduced that little inward pinch the right eye has. As far as modification on the eyes, that was the majority of it. The rest was trimming the inside edges of both eyes, at an angle, to make the eyes look thinner. They showed how thick the latex was and from my research, the original mask was fairly thin.
Again, season to taste.
- Thirdly, I trimmed the back of the hair and a small portion of the bottom of the mask. Both the neck and the hair are a bit too long. I trimmed the bottom of the neck by about a quarter (you don't want to cut too much) and I trimmed the back of the hair so that it barely went past the ear lobes. Now, here's some recycling for your ass: I used that clipped hair to fill in spots of the hair that were thin and to pad out some of the top.
- Fourthly? Fourth thing: once that that was done, I patted the hair down and took it out for painting. With the cheapest paints I could find (Figured that's what would've been done during production), I masked off the face and hair. I did the hair first: I masked the face off and darkened the hair with black spray paint. Once I got that to how I liked, I did the same for the face. Now, with the face, all you want to do is paint with light sprays from the front, sweeping side to side. You want to do this because the bottom of the jaw/chin, and front/back of the neck on the mask are partially flesh-toned and from the results I got, I'm positive this is how it happened along with wear from use. Also, you want some of the dark color on the nose to lip to ever so slightly show through. Once it dried, I rubbed my hand the mask together to dull some of the white and get some of the original weathering/color underneath to show. For me, painting that sort of stuff on makes it look insincere.
Touch up as you please and season to taste. For me, there were some over-spray both on the mask and hair and I left some of it intact because I thought it made it look more "film-y" (But, again, this is all to your preference). Give it a spot of semi-gloss clear to get some of that slight reflective quality of the mask (and to preserve your paint) and you're pretty much done, cosmetically.
Once it's all cured and dry, and not-stinky, mess up the hair and style it any which way you like. In my book, it doesn't quite look like an H1 if the hair isn't parted to the right, slightly egg-shaped with a bouffant, and the back flayed out past the ears.
But, that's just me.
Oh, and I actually punched a hole in the spot where the hole was sculpted to be. Just because.
Some final words of advice:
- If you're using Rustoleum paints/clear coats, let that **** dry outside for a time. I think they changed their formula recently because the clear coats not only smell funny, but have a slight stippling effect when they're applied, and smell much longer than they did before.
- To get a good H1 looking mask, it really depends on the head it's being worn on or how the thing is padded on a dummy. The original mask had a head size of something around 23.5 inches or something like that and was meant for kids, so it took the shape of whatever head it was on. Nick Castle wore the mask for the majority of the first film and he had a longer face, comparatively to Dick Warlock, who had a wider head. Just something to keep in mind.
Originally:
After modifications:
