Starting a Jim Carrey's Grinch Build

I have a quick question for anybody tracking this thread:

I peeled the latex mask off of the form/sculpt last night and did a quick test-fit to make sure it looked like it would fit. (Of course, keep in mind that I will be cutting this into two separate prosthetic pieces, just like they did for the movie. It won't be a full mask in the end.)

Well, my next step with that thing is going to be to cut out the eye holes and nose holes. (And I'll probably poke holes through the 16 or so "pores" that I sculpted into his muzzle.)

I noticed last night that, while my nose does extend out to the muzzle, if I breathe through my nose while wearing the mask, that front flat muzzle area (which is so defining of the movie Grinch's face) "flaps" / sucks inward and outward. I certainly don't want it doing that while I'm wearing it.

Would inserting / gluing (with latex?) foam into that muzzle be the only good solution for that? (I'd really hate to use more foam against my face.)
I'm thinking certainly costumers encounter this issue every once in a while. Not sure what's standard practice.

Thank you!

Status update:

1) MASK (two prosthetic pieces, really) -- I've got the mask finished, in terms of basic latex layers. And I've painted a two base coat layers, followed by a "layer" where I mixed green and black paint and painted the various lines and small "shadow-divots" on his face. I then sponged on several thin layers of green, starting with a very dark olive green and working lighter. I'm still not done with it. I need to add a couple more layers of lighter color. BUT, I think at this point, I may want to stop and focus on the eyebrows and whatever facial hair I want to add to the sides of the mask, to help hide the boundary between it and the "hood", I'll be wearing at the back of my head.

So, although I've done a bit of research on adding hair realistically, I really need to do more. I'll probably end up doing that tonight, when I won't be at home anyways, but will have time to lookup some things on my phone.

Here are two photos: One from a few days ago and one from this morning. (Note that I've placed some plastic-wrap between the latex pieces and the clay form underneath, which I'm using as a support for the pieces while I paint.)



2) HANDS -- These are proving to be frustrating. I should have researched this more, but I will be consulting with my seamstress tonight. (I really didn't want to add this work to her to-do list.) I had simply traced my hand on poster board and then traced basically a LARGER hand around that (mostly, a longer one). I cut out two of those, one for each side of the hand. Then, I placed them back-to-back with each other (fur on the INSIDE... with intent to turn them inside-out when I'm done)... for pinning and sewing. The problem is, there are still gaps in-between the two halves at the insides of the fingers / the points where the fingers meet. Yes, I could patch these, but it will be rather time-consuming. My seamstress says she has a pair of gloves I could possibly put the material over. (I do have some fabric glue.) So, like I said, I'm going to discuss this process with her tonight.

3) TEETH -- Done with painting. Just need clear-coating to get back some of that shine.

4) SHOES -- Instead of using my old pair of lawn-mowing tennis shoes, I went out to Walmart and bought a $10 pair of slip-on shoes with flat soles. I then used my fancy 3M foam glue (a spray) to spray a strip of the floor mat foam to the outer sides of each shoe. Then, I trimmed the upper sides of that strip down to where I should be able to fold them over slightly to overlap / glue on top of the shoe itself. I also carved a curvy-point (like an elf shoe) on the front ends of each now-U-shaped foam strip. (Sorry, I don't have photos yet.) So, these still need a bit of gluing (which goes quickly, really)... and then they'll be ready for me to apply the red Santa suit material to the outside of the floor mat foam.

5) SUIT -- Haven't received an update from the lady doing the sewing work, but at last word, she was supposed to be shortening the arms and legs a tad. And she was also adding in material to the Santa coat, using material from the Santa pants. I'll see her later on tonight.

6) MAX THE DOG -- I ordered a relatively inexpensive stuffed dog online. It took me several hours of research to try to find the "acceptable point" between price vs. size.
I ended up buying this guy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000NV7M8Y/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I started carving a "reindeer horn" / "tree branch" out of foam last night. And I intend to find some sort of red rubber or felt ball for the nose. I'm not sure how I'm going to attach either of them just yet ??? They need to be STABLE and durable, but I don't want such an attachment to be permanent or to mar the dog in any way.

OK, that's it for now! Thanks!

Just a few quick photos from today:

1) Here's a photo of the shoes. They're ready for me to add the red "Santa Suit material". After that, I add the white trim and two small jingle bells on the tips and these will be done. They are basically a $10 pair of Walmart slip-on shoes, wrapped with EVA foam (workshop floor mat stuff). I used a certain type of spray-glue produced by 3M just for gluing foam.



2) The mask so far. Getting lighter in color. (But note that the lightest green in this photo is where I "overpainted" onto the Saran Wrap that I've been placing underneath my two prosthetic pieces as I paint. I also added eyebrows today. For that, I used rubber cement to glue strips of the green fur. I then trimmed the fur and pointed it forward for all of the eyebrows except the far ends, where he has long strands of fur curling upwards. I then mixed some gray paint with some of the dark olive green I'd mixed up and brushed a bit of that into the eyebrows, so as to make them darker.


3) Got one of the hands finally done. I totally redid it from my last attempt. This time, I drew a much larger shape around my hand, when I'd placed it onto the material. After cutting that out, I placed my hand on a large sheet of the fur (facing down) and then placed the cut-out-fur on the top of my hand.. and started pinning it in place (having a piece of foam board underneath). This was very awkward and I didn't feel very confident with what I was doing. But then I had a brainstorm: I cut out the lower piece of fur in the shape of my template... and then started using a STAPLER to "pin" the two halves together. I figured this would at least get me a somewhat tight shape to my hands. I could then cut off the excess and start sewing the two halves together. And that's what I did, though I really didn't cut them as close to my fingers as I'd originally thought I would. The fingers are all about 3 inches longer than my fingertips.

View attachment 2017-10-14 13.23.29.jpg


4) And here's a quick shot of my finished teeth. All I had left to do on them this morning was to clear-coat them. (Gee, I sure hope wearing acrylic-paint in your mouth isn't incredibly toxic.)
View attachment 2017-10-14 13.27.45.jpg

Update: We found out on Tuesday night that our party for today (Saturday) was cancelled. They've been forecasting an 80% chance of storms and that party was supposed to be totally outdoors. So, that gave me a bit of a break.

I finished both gloves. I met with my seamstress and we worked out a few things about the hood, which is basically ready.

And today, I'm gluing the red felt material onto the shoes.

I've also been slowly gluing small bits of fur onto the edges of the mask, in order to help disguise the border between it and the hood. Been using rubber cement for that. Although the stuff is awfully "goopy", it seems to be working just fine. And last night, I tested gluing a patch of fur to the top of another patch of fur, just to see if maybe I could give the Grinch more of a "mohawk", like he actually had going on the movie. I haven't run down and taken a look at the results yet.

I figured, there's no way I need to run a comb through his hair anyways. Everybody expects it to look messy. And this hair literally goes all over the place anyways. So making a patch of it longer by gluing onto it just might be okay and hard to notice. Guess we'll soon find out.

Other than studying up on using pros-aide, all I really need to do after I finish the shoes and the facial fur is to finish carving and painting Max's antler.

It's nice to not feel rushed, for a change, when building a costume for Halloween. On the other hand, I now no longer have a "test run night". Next Saturday night will be do-or-die!

Oh, forgot to mention, it just so happened that a new version of the Grinch movie came out on Blue-Ray this week. I had advanced ordered it on Amazon. My wife and I watched it on Wednesday night. I guess I paid a bit more attention to Jim's performance this time... exactly what he was doing with his face and what words he was saying. And, even though it was STILL a bit over-the-top at points, I could appreciate what he was trying to do. I can't say that anything surprised me, except for maybe the fact that I think at a couple of key points, the reason his makeup and fur looked so bright yellowish-green may have been because they were shining a green light on him at those points.

Thanks!

-= Dave =-

Ah, the curse of my Halloween Costume hobby: I never seem to get very many photos of me actually WEARING my costumes.

But here's a couple.




I won first place, $1000 cash in a metro area dance bar's Halloween Costume Contest last night!
But what's most amazing about that is that... during the final judging part... where they take time to have the top 10 costumes strut a little, then narrow down the winners one by one using audience applause / screaming.... the glue on the right side of my face / prosthetic had failed completely. I was basically holding it in place with my hand like 75% of the time and trying to alter my posing to hide it. Despite this, we won!

I don't want to sound like I'm bragging, but I honestly didn't have very much in the way of serious competition. And, honestly, I expected to place maybe 4th - 6th or something. I didn't build this to COMPETE. I built it because I thought it was FUNNY (Christmas at Halloween.... "I'm sorry.... are we TOO EARLY ??").

Other notable top 10 competition was: Two guys dressed as a pair of breasts, four guys dressed as Mario Brothers and King Koopa, a guy dressed as a night stand (labelled "A One-Night Stand"), somebody dressed as the dead girl from the Ring (stepping out of a well), and the Wicked Witch of the West (I would have added some flying monkeys).


ONE BIG LESSON LEARNED: I need something better than Pros-Aide as an adhesive. I know I probably rushed a few areas / you're supposed to wait until it dries a bit so that it becomes tacky. However, at about the 2.5 hour mark of me moving around and dancing without much care, the glue started failing big-time. I had a repair kit and took time to reapply, but it just wasn't sticking very well at all. Obviously, sweat was a major factor in preventing reapplication.

Also, I know that what you're supposed to do is, glue on the prosthetic, then take liquid latex and go back over the edges so as to hide them. Well, maybe this works better when somebody else is there to do the work on you. I had a lot of trouble trying to sponge latex on that way. Seemed like the layers were either way too thin or too globby. And then I had a hard time doing this in the areas at the temples, where the two prosthetics came within an inch of each other. So I said, screw it, I'll just put on make up and hope with the low light, it won't be very noticeable.

I definitely have learned to "roll with the punches". When the right side of my prosthetic started majorly failing, I stopped all dancing and acting goofy and just sat at the table and obsessed over the glue for a while. It kind of took the wind from my sails and bummed me out. But my wife became even more bummed out than me, because she saw I had stopped being so active and then I'd told her what was happening. I ended up having to cheer her up. I said, "You know, I've been down this road before. NOTHING with these costumes ever goes COMPLETELY as I intended. There's always something that went wrong. Something I didn't have time for. Some minor thing I forgot to do. Some part that fails. It is what it is. We'll go up and present ourselves and ...who cares? We've been having a VERY fun time. Have had some great photo-ops and fun joking around with people."

It's hard to admit that when in your head, you're a perfectionist. But I've learned it with time.

Gotta run! If I get any more decent photos coming in from relatives, I'll add them to this thread. THANKS!

-= Dave =-

There is ALWAYS something that will go wrong at an event. Even if it is just minor.

Congratulations on the $1000. That is a BIG win. I haven't won anything like that even from cosplay competitions. The ones in my area seem to be $100 max prizes. After winning a couple, it paid for the feet on one of my costumes. Lol.

Great job.


You will find something better for the face. You could also attach the suit fur to the sides, so even if it comes off of your face a bit, it is still on your head instead of sliding around.

Iggy,

Thanks very much! Yeah, if I wear it again (and that may come NEXT year, not this holiday season), I will probably modify the mask a bit and get rid of that hood.

Here are a few more pics... from Tuesday night, when we stopped by to see the grandkids:



I think part of my problem the first time I used the Pros-Aide was that I only put it at the edges, and even then in a rather narrow strip. I put it on in much wider areas on Tuesday night and it seemed to hold better. Still, after about 1.5 - 2 hours, the adhesive wasn't sticking at all around my mouth. My upper lip was particularly sweaty.

Oh well, lessons being learned!

Still waiting on one relative to send me pics from Saturday night.

Oh, you can see our dog in the one above! My youngest grandson wanted to keep Max !


Thanks!

https://www.extrememakeupfx.com/Mehron-Sweat-Barrier-p/m-bs.htm You need something like this.

Final batch of photos finally came in from a relative:




For that last one, I was probably saying "Somebody's... FAB-U-LOOOOOUUUS!"

My wife now wants me to make Christmas Cards out of the one photo where I have a glass in my hand (from an earlier post here).
Plus, we're discussing.... NEXT year (since we're moving at the end of the month, which really interrupts life).... asking if we could be Salvation Army Bell Ringers (preferably, at the local mall) for a few hours and wear these costumes!

Merry Christmas, everyone!