First serious sculpt, advice welcome!

Hey all, first time poster long time lurker. Been wanting to bust into the special effects world for a long while now, and I'm a pretty regular convention goer. Wanted to do something big for the next one so I picked General Raam from Gears of war. One of my favorite villains by far. I wanted to go full out with cast head and arms to make him come to life. This will be my first sculpt put into casting and I had a few questions for the veterans out there. The first is measurements. I'm using the monster maker armature for the head, the arms will be done later when I cast my own arms for reference. My question is what should I do about the facial proportions, mostly the eyes, so I can have a good fit while also being able to see? Where should I take the measurements that matter? And how much extra should I add on with clay for a comfortable fit? The pics below have gator face for reference and the current progress. I still need to cover down most of the neck before I start evening it up and getting mega chin's proportions right. This is a pretty relaxed project, only working in my off time. Oh, and I don't know if it matters but I'm using Chavant NSP medium hardness. I like it better than the soft.

Wish I could offer some help, but I myself am a pretty inexperienced sculptor.

You have a few considerations here... firstly, what are you going to cast this in? Latex? Silicone? If it's latex you have to figure in 10-15% shrinkage. Being a monster head I'm not sure how important it is, as long as it fits over your head of course. If it's sillicone then you'll want it to fit pretty close... there is no shrinkage to worry about with silicone as far as i know. The eyes are difficult as they are obviously wider than average human eyes. You will either have to change the design to conform to human dimensions, or you will have to get creative with the eyeholes, using slits hidden in the creases, or maybe lookng through the nostrils... it's not an ideal way to see when wearing it, but you may have little choice.

Alaneye said:

You have a few considerations here... firstly, what are you going to cast this in? Latex? Silicone? If it's latex you have to figure in 10-15% shrinkage. Being a monster head I'm not sure how important it is, as long as it fits over your head of course. If it's sillicone then you'll want it to fit pretty close... there is no shrinkage to worry about with silicone as far as i know. The eyes are difficult as they are obviously wider than average human eyes. You will either have to change the design to conform to human dimensions, or you will have to get creative with the eyeholes, using slits hidden in the creases, or maybe lookng through the nostrils... it's not an ideal way to see when wearing it, but you may have little choice.

Click to expand...

I thought long and hard over this, and I decided I was going for silicone. Most likely one of smoothon's many products. The plan with the eyes is to use my own, I love that life like look when you use a real persons eyes in mask over just having that soulless stare. Plus it saves me from having to do animatronics and such. I agree with you on the design change so I can use my own eyes, luckily his eyes are so deep set that I wont have to worry about my beak of a nose pushing out against the mask.
Here are a few more pics of progress. I got the back of the head and neck to where I want it, now I've got to get the jaw, chin and general head shape going on. The one pic has measurement lines marked out for my forehead, eyeline and mouth.


That strip on the side views chin is what I want to add on yet. It's harder than I thought to not conform to basic head shape. That and they basically used a potato for Raams head...

hey im a makeup sfx artist so you can pm me with any questions you have.:rolleyes

And I'm back with a small update. I'm working towards my degree with a few summer courses so they don't give me much free time after the day is done. Anyway, here's the the finished base. Got that nice round chin and thick neck going on. The holes on the front shot is where my eyes would be If I humanized the face a bit. This is kind of annoying since Raam's are roughly the same as a hammerhead shark... In the professional opinions of the many great people that post and lurk here, should I try to finish out the humanish version first and see how it looks? Or just french the end of the barrel and go for the animatronic eyes and watch the world through his nose? I'm leaning towards seeing the humanified version of this myself, it'd be great practice anyway. Thanks all!

"hey im a makeup sfx artist so you can pm me with any questions you have." By FX builder. Thank you very much! I will probably give you a jingle when I get to texturing and casting and such! My quote button didn't work for some reason, so I went the old fashioned way.