help making silicone mask

[maskman mick]

Hi there,
I'm thinking of making a silicone Hellboy mask for a friend. He is getting a plaster head (life) cast made and i am going to use this to sculpt the mask on.
I've been looking at several tutorials, but not sure what silicone to use. I've used silicone to make jacket moulds in the past but not for casting.
I noticed that Wilysteve moulds from a fibreglass mould, with no inner 'glove' part and as I'm in the UK, I'm wondering what I can use without mailing away overseas?
Also, is there a special paint?

 

[piehead]

Hi ive done a fair few silicone masks with by f.x. buddy hushmappupy. i would get neill gortons 4 part dvd set from mouldlife on the subject. also you can get platgel 10 and deadener there as well as a ton of other great supplies. best thing for a mould is to use fibreglass or urethane. same for the lifecast as its best to inject silicone through the inside of the mould. as for paints fuse fx silicone paints are brilliant but you can make your own with a miix of the silicone , oil colour that is then thinned down with naptha. we have some youtube stuff about silicone type hushmapuppy into you tube search function. we are in the u.k. . p.m me if you need advice or help anytime mate. theres a lot to go into for one reply. silicone masks arnt as straightforward as you might think. also i would join the fx lab. www.theeffectslab.com. you will learn heaps and pros and amateurs are all there to advise and help. there is a real wealth of experience and a few of us who do the silicone stuff. i'm also a moderator there.

 

[piehead]

by the way my favourite silicone for the mask itself is polyteks platsil gel 10 from mouldlife in the u.k. its 1 to 1 mix but i always use smiths prosthetic deadener to make it more fleshy available from the same place www.mouldlife.co.uk doesnt take as long to cure as say ecoflex 30 from smooth on and so less likely to be inhibited. by the way platinum silicones will not set up if around latex, anything containing aloe and cyanoacrylates. as i said feel free to p.m. me though.

 

[maskman mick]

thanks mate, sounds like you know your stuff and I still have a lot to learn! Won't be doing this for a few months yet, so starting my research early.
Can the silicone by applied by hand or does it need to be injected? I'm plan to do it the simplest way possible.

 

[piehead]

can be appled by hand but will never fit perfectly and move that well really always better to injec. its not that hard to do at all. we use drain blaster syringesthat cost about a quid a piece and hold approx a kilo of silicone. the biggest thing is setting the mould up. we do a 3 piece negative mould . makes demoulding easier . weve come up with a method of making a hollow core for the mould using urethane cast out of a negative alginate lifecast too that saves time and a lot of money. i have a master stone cast i use for personal silicone masks that i take alginae and plaster casts from and reproduce in hollow urethane plastic. folks say this cant be done but wih a few interim steps it can quite easily. we use alwa s5 urethane from mouldlife. what you do is to take a lifecast from the master. do he bak in plaster bandage and the front in alginate with a plasteer bandage mother shell. thourougly release the back shell with paste wax and set aside. then wih the alginate half swill in some acetone and pour it out . this dries the surface out. then talc thouroughly to get rid of any residual surface moisture. spray a couple of coats of clear laquer then a couple of coats of either spray wax of epoxy parfilm . mix a small amount of the urethane and brush int both halves to capture detail. them mix another batch but add polyfibre to bulk out and thicken and brush orbutter that into both sides of the mould. put the two halves together and let that gel bu not cure and mix another sall batch of urethane, butter this around the seam to seal. when all is cured after about a hour demould. and sand off any flashing. any defects can be sorted with easy sand car filler . this gives a nice hollow master to sculpt over and gives a hollow core to the mould to inject through too you only need about 5 to 10 mm thickness. works a treat. we used it with the davros mask commission we did. also with some zombie masks we did earlier this year. wich reminds me i must post some pics of those. there is a vid on youtube tha shows his id you type hushmapuppy in the search function of youtube though. weve used silicone quite a few years now and pretty much have it down. as i said feel free to ask anything. happy to help out.

 

[maskman mick]

thanks mate, bit confused though! why does the core have to be hollow and can I make it in fibreglass?

 

[piehead]

if you use a hollow core it makes injection and clean up of the silicone so much easier. fibreglass is a great option for this. what basicaly happens is you can drill a hole into the top of the core and using car body filler secure a length of pvc tube that comes up past the shoulders and that is an appropriate diameter to accept a drain blaster syringe (b&q) are good for those. if you inject from the interior of the core you dont have the clean up of a pour spout on the outside that can be tricky to patch. you will just have a little flashing from the mould seams. also for silicone masks i find it best to make a 3 piece bolt together mould from fibreglass. the front half goes just forward of the ears then the back section moulded in 2 quarters. just makes demoulding without tearing much easier. been making one of these mould this weekend for an animatronic i'm doing. i have pics of the process i can post up from past silicone masks and if you type hushmapuppy into youtube there is a two part vid of us making a silicone davros mask that shows a fair bit.

 

[fabrik]

Hey mask man,

Sounds like you're getting a bunch of help here but thought i'd suggest the Smooth-On website they got loads of videos and tutorials and i belive they're planning on setting up a school/lab at their factory to start running workshops for newbs like us.

http://www.smooth-on.com/

Good luck with your mask, looking forward to seeing some pics.

 

[piehead]

check out my platsil gel10 mask from earlir this year on the silicone zombie thread. personaly its my silicone of choice for this type of job. much quicker cure than smooth on stuff (wich is excellent still) so less chance of inhibition. it was done with around 100% deadener and moved a treat.

 

[maskman mick]

I found some good tutorials on Gel-10 by Brickintheyard on you tube, the other day.I that stuff all available over in the UK?

 

[piehead]

yeah you can get it and a load of other useful stuff from www.mouldlife.co.uk always best to phone em ask for justin, russell or john and tell em ian sent you.

 

[bleyd]

VERY informative thread. Thanks for being so detailed in your process. I plan to take a whack at doing silicone too cause I like the end results from the masks I've seen posted here.

 

[nathes]

I've had a the original mask from new line cinerma 1995 for some years now and have had alot of fun with it, although it is now starting to show its age, cracks have appeared and have been sealed with liquid latex and the suitable colour latex paint, inside I have had to add gause to strengthen then structure, I would now like to find out about the possibilites of recasting using silicone, maybe using using this mask as as base to start from, I thought about using it as a shell adding some agent to stop the silicone from sticking and just making a mold, I would love to hear your comments and advice as this seems to be the place where the experience is in abundance, one other thing which is the best sillicone for providing a smooth skin like finish and how to I add the colours