So, here is where we are at with the testing right now. From what we can see, the original masks were made of a soft foam that had dried out and hardened over the years. So, we did two tests, one with a soft self-skinning foam and one with a rigid self-skinning foam.
There are some notable differences. First, one the rigid foam, we went with a grey base so that the areas in which the silver topcoat missed, you still see a close to correct color. This makes for an "idealized look" as it changes the overall color of the topcoat. The soft foam version used a more natural yellow/tan colored foam which, as you can see, shows through in a number of areas and even changes the overall look of the silver. This more closely matches the originals, but looks less appealing.
The other thing I have noticed is that the rigid foam seems to have captured the details more clearly and shows all the etched lines in perfect detail whereas the soft foam looks, well, softer. The details are not as apparent.
Another thing that I have noticed quite a bit in the movie and with some of the originals after the film is that the "V" shape created by the ears can change quite dramatically. If you notice, the V on the soft foam head is wider than on the rigid foam head. That is because I am using pins to pin down the sides of the head to a foam mannequin head and when you pull back the sides of the head the ears widen. You can see this happening in the movie as well. In certain shots the ears appear wider than in others. The flex of the mask is what causes this. If you widen the face, the ears become almost parallel.
Anyway, we are going to do more testing and do at least a couple more masks before we get it right, but I thought I'd post these up for you to look at.
First are the photos of the soft foam mask:
thumbsup:thumbsup Did Frank get a lot of attention at Comic Con?
