Leslie Vernon Mask WIP

Hey all,

I couldn't figure out what to get my buddy for Christmas so I decided to make him something. We're both huge fans of Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon and he's said in the past that he wanted a replica of the mask, and I figured that was something I could manage.



Ideally, I would have sculpted and then cast it, but I don't have the time or money for that. So I'm sculpting it out of Super Sculpey. So far, so good I think.

I bought a foam head from Hobby Lobby so I could build it on a face shape in case he ever wants to wear it. I left the plastic wrapper on in hopes that it will make the process of removing the mask from the head a bit easier. I might need to bake it in stages to keep everything in place, but we'll see how it goes.

Here's my progress so far. I'm still kinda roughing out the shape, but have been trying to keep it mostly smooth along the way. Once I get the chin built up, I'll start working on getting it to look more screen-accurate. Then paint, hair, straps, all that good stuff. And I have until the 17th to get it done! So that'll be fun.

Looks good so far. I love that movie, I can't wait to see your mask finished! Keep us updated.

You may want to consider building the foam head up considerably before sculpting on it. If you were to bake the sculpture at that size, it would not fit a human face.

Mr Mold Maker said:

You may want to consider building the foam head up considerably before sculpting on it. If you were to bake the sculpture at that size, it would not fit a human face.

Click to expand...

I definitely took that into consideration...right after I baked it. Haha. Oh well, it might still fit him. If not, it'll still be a good display piece, which is what I predict it would have been anyway.

Okay I'm pretty much finished, so here's a big picture dump...

After getting the basic upper face shape, I opened up the mouth area. I made it bigger than neccessary because it would make it easier to have a flush opening when I added the lips and chin. When I added the lips, I made the upper lip area smaller because I realized the one I had shaped initially was way too big. I built up the cheeks a bit more and rounded out the edges. Oh and I also blunted the nose to be more screen-accurate.
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I added the ears. After putting together substandard screen grabs and some better pictures of replicas, I saw that these were basically simple C-shaped cartoon ears. They also looked to me to be asymmetrical, so I went with that.
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I worked on details like the scarring under the eye and on the chin. I also locked in the shape of the eye holes.
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Ready to bake. Last minute decision was to mar up the surface with a metal bristled brush. I figured it would be easier to do this than texture with the paint like I'd originally planned.
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After the bake. It mostly kept its shape, but I guess I didn't build it up with enough foil because it kinda curved in a bit on one side. I dremeled out the chin area to kinda open it up more for an actual human sized head. I guess whether or not it worked will be tested when my friend tries it on.
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Now my favorite part. Paint. Started out with a French Blue base, then worked on it with varying thicknesses of black and brown washes.
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Then for the hair. This was an interesting adventure because I'd never worked with crepe hair. Since Sculpey is finicky with a lot of glues, I decided to use my wife's Mod Podge. I clipped some off the braid and straightened it with her hair straightener. The process was much messier than I was anticipating, but i figure the actual prop mask has a real handmade look to it, so this just adds character. Haha. I pretty much grabbed a clump of the hair, put it to the mask, and saturated it with Mod Podge using a sponge brush. Rinse, repeat, until I got the scrappy coverage like the actual mask.


Once the glue had sufficiently set, I did some slight trimming and a bit of styling and called it good. The more I look at it though, the more I think it needs to be trimmed shorter still. Thoughts?


Anyway, that's pretty much the finished product. Not perfectly screen accurate, but I think it gets the message across. I might try to figure out some straps, but I have to give it to him in a couple days and I have a busy weekend ahead of me so I don't know if I'll have time.

Thanks for looking!