spazzman31337
Member
What is up everyone, I hope you all had a great Halloween. I know it's a little late to post my costume build, but anyways here it is.This is my first time doing a build as I am new to Special Effects prosthetics; so fair warning I made a few rookie mistakes which you will see through out this presentation. I did a Silent Hill Nurse build and used my Girlfriend as the model.
To start, the first step was for me to make a life cast of the models head. I put a bald cap on her, then i cover her head in a mix of alginate and plaster. I took a time lapse video of the process that can be seen right here:
I covered her entire head in an attempt to make a full head cast. That was my first mistake. The alginate ended up tearing pretty bad in the back so I had to remove the whole backside and settle for just a face. As I have said before, i'm completely new to all of this and learned from the whole ordeal haha. After I had finished sanding down some of the jagged edges I was finally at the fun part SCULPTING
.
Now I had to sculpt this reddish/brown clay into something that looked as if it had been pulled from the depths of silent hill itself. I was quite nervous at this point, for i had never touched this clay before.
I took a Time lapse of that process:
as well as, a few photos of the finished sculpt.
At this point, I was pretty happy with the way everything had turned out. So, I decided it was time to tackle the next process: MOLDING. I was weary of this process because any wrong move could potentially ruin all of the work i had done so far. I continued with my work despite that gut feeling, and long into this process is where I made my second mistake DUN DUN DUN. I locked the mold behind the ears as you can see in these photos right here:
So in an attempt to salvage my work, I came up with an idea to get this bad boy un-stuck... I would cut out the ear and key it back in like so:
In a panic I decided that I would make keys out of JB Weld two-part Epoxy Putty. I have no idea if this is the proper method for fixing this but i did it anyways and it worked out great. Once I had fixed my mistake, I tossed the whole head into the oven to melt the clay.
This worked out pretty well. However, I did end up making my third mistake, I over cooked my clay. I turned it into this hard chalky clay. This made it a pain to clean off the hydrocal (plaster). It liked to hold onto both sides of the negative and positive, but after a good hour of pulling and prying I finally got the two half's separated. One ear was destroyed during all of this, but that is a small fix.
I have to say the feeling of seeing the two finally apart was amazing minus the ear damage.
Cleaning this thing out was no easy task. It took my girlfriend and I a good day to; scrub, scrape, and pry out all this clay. After spending most of the day tediously cleaning the molds, I finally thought about spraying all of this down with hot water in my shower. It worked well and got all the remaining rock hard clay off. (which would have saved much time if we would have done this in the beginning
.
I celebrated a bit for getting this far. Afterwards, I melted down some prosthetic gelatin and filled the negative with it. I then smashed the two half's back together thinking to myself, "I will probably never get them apart again." I waited a good two hours before demolding it and to my surprise it came out without any issues. It was now time to move on to the next step. PAINTING this bad boy.
I went online and bought two skin illustrator palettes to use with this project and I must say that I have come to love these palettes, they're freaking amazing!
In addition to the palettes, I also used latex mask grease paint. Here is another time lapse video of the steps i took while painting this face.
The hat is a simple nurse hat I got off of amazon. I heated it so it would warp a little, then I covered it with liquid latex and then painted the hat.
These are the steps i took to make this costume and I must say that I'm very happy with the way it turned out. I know I made a few mistakes but you learn from your mistakes. And I did learn quite a bit from all of this and cant wait to make more sculpts, minus the mistakes lol.
Anyways, here are a few finale shots of the full costume. Thanks for reading my blathering and if you have any kind of tips on what to do or techniques I would love to hear them Thank you all and have an awesome day.
To start, the first step was for me to make a life cast of the models head. I put a bald cap on her, then i cover her head in a mix of alginate and plaster. I took a time lapse video of the process that can be seen right here:
I covered her entire head in an attempt to make a full head cast. That was my first mistake. The alginate ended up tearing pretty bad in the back so I had to remove the whole backside and settle for just a face. As I have said before, i'm completely new to all of this and learned from the whole ordeal haha. After I had finished sanding down some of the jagged edges I was finally at the fun part SCULPTING
. Now I had to sculpt this reddish/brown clay into something that looked as if it had been pulled from the depths of silent hill itself. I was quite nervous at this point, for i had never touched this clay before.
I took a Time lapse of that process:
At this point, I was pretty happy with the way everything had turned out. So, I decided it was time to tackle the next process: MOLDING. I was weary of this process because any wrong move could potentially ruin all of the work i had done so far. I continued with my work despite that gut feeling, and long into this process is where I made my second mistake DUN DUN DUN. I locked the mold behind the ears as you can see in these photos right here:
So in an attempt to salvage my work, I came up with an idea to get this bad boy un-stuck... I would cut out the ear and key it back in like so:
In a panic I decided that I would make keys out of JB Weld two-part Epoxy Putty. I have no idea if this is the proper method for fixing this but i did it anyways and it worked out great
. Once I had fixed my mistake, I tossed the whole head into the oven to melt the clay.This worked out pretty well. However, I did end up making my third mistake, I over cooked my clay. I turned it into this hard chalky clay. This made it a pain to clean off the hydrocal (plaster). It liked to hold onto both sides of the negative and positive, but after a good hour of pulling and prying I finally got the two half's separated. One ear was destroyed during all of this, but that is a small fix.
I have to say the feeling of seeing the two finally apart was amazing minus the ear damage.
Cleaning this thing out was no easy task. It took my girlfriend and I a good day to; scrub, scrape, and pry out all this clay. After spending most of the day tediously cleaning the molds, I finally thought about spraying all of this down with hot water in my shower. It worked well and got all the remaining rock hard clay off. (which would have saved much time if we would have done this in the beginning
.
I celebrated a bit for getting this far. Afterwards, I melted down some prosthetic gelatin and filled the negative with it. I then smashed the two half's back together thinking to myself, "I will probably never get them apart again." I waited a good two hours before demolding it and to my surprise it came out without any issues. It was now time to move on to the next step. PAINTING this bad boy.
I went online and bought two skin illustrator palettes to use with this project and I must say that I have come to love these palettes, they're freaking amazing!
In addition to the palettes, I also used latex mask grease paint. Here is another time lapse video of the steps i took while painting this face.
The hat is a simple nurse hat I got off of amazon. I heated it so it would warp a little, then I covered it with liquid latex and then painted the hat.
These are the steps i took to make this costume and I must say that I'm very happy with the way it turned out. I know I made a few mistakes but you learn from your mistakes. And I did learn quite a bit from all of this and cant wait to make more sculpts, minus the mistakes lol.
Anyways, here are a few finale shots of the full costume. Thanks for reading my blathering and if you have any kind of tips on what to do or techniques I would love to hear them
Thank you all and have an awesome day.
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