The making of Raphael, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Jessica

Well-Known Member
I thought it would be cool to document my trials and tribulations in making this mask for my five year old son. I was inspired by this particular thread and thought, dang I think I can do that too! :love

http://www.therpf.com/f24/tmnt-replica-suit-diary-new-pics-8-31-10-pg2-90023/

I first measured the head of this mannequin, which I thought would be a good platform to build on. The circumference is only one inch larger than my son's measurements...and the eyes hit the same spot. I thought maybe I could make an Ultracal mold and slush some latex, which I have not done yet. Or perhaps try something new, like Flex Foam 17.

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Here is how he looked after four pounds of clay. My son did not like his expression, and wanted it to look just like the mask that came with his costume.
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I ran out of clay, unfortunately, and had to make a quick run to the store. As luck would have it, they did not have Klean Klay, and I went with whatever oil based clay they had. :cry I must have felt up every single looking bead or whatnot at the store, to try and see if I could get something that I could make a texture stamp with. I almost bought some beads because I liked the texture of the packaging and thought it would work but talked myself out of it.

For texture, I found a mesh pocket that I imbedded some oven bake clay onto. I then I cured it in my toaster oven. When that was cooled off, I made another impression of it so that I could create the "reptilian texture" I needed, and cured that.

It took a day to build up the sculpt and get the expression perfected. The texturing took less than an hour and was quite fun. It helped to powder it first with some baby powder so that the texture stamp would not stick on.

Here are the photos of how he looks now. Still needs some minor tweaking...and then I will need to create a mold.

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I'll post some photographs of my texture stamp and the original mask that came with the costume soon.
 
haha thats an awesome start right! it looks like he wants it to be like the cartoon series. Can't wait to see how it turns out!
 
Photo of what I ended up to use as texture, which is some kind of mesh/netting pocket from a camera bag. The first blob to the left is an impression of the netting. This was cured in the toaster oven, and another impression was made of this to get a reverse pattern.

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Here's Ashton helping me try to cover up the green clay with white clay to help me build up the sculpt:
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He's so excited about this mask:
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That's turning out nicely Jessica!

If you are having trouble with the Texture Stamp... I may be able to help you.

If you have a Dremel you can make a Sculpting tool that will create the Texture you want, or you can Sculpt a Patten on a flat sheet of Clay, brush on Layers of Rubber Latex, and Create a Custom "stamp".
 
I tell ya you get my vote for "Mother of the year"

Every last one of us wished we would have one like you!
 
Yes, it's Ashton's Halloween costume. The latex mask at the store was way too big for him, and I promised him I could make him a better one.
 
I have a question. Should I make this sculpt a little bit bigger to compensate for the shrinkage of latex? I'm going to go with latex instead of flex foam 17.

I found my original clay texture/stamp. It took several passes through the netting to make a believable reptilian texture (to me). This is a positive...I created a negative of it to create my textures on the clay.
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And here's Ashton's sad little mask that came with his costume. He deserves way better than this.
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That Texture Stamp turned out great!! I like the bottom half the best because it's not as uniform as the top half...

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I look forward to seeing more of your progress...
 
I decided to build up the turtle some more to compensate for the shrinkage of the latex:
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Here's a photo of the clay dam in preparation of the Ultracal mold:
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crap crap crap! The dam of clay broke as I piled on the Ultracal. In frustration, I watered the garden. I'm going to have some ice cream and make myself feel better.

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Today was about damage control. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I reworked a new clay dam to replace the damaged one and covered up the hairy mess with more Ultracal. When that was cured, I turned it over and removed the clay dam, exposing all of the holes and gullies that I had to fix. I made a small batch of ultracal and put that in a ziplock baggie and cut a small hole and proceeded to pipe in the Ultracal to fill in the crevices. When that was smoothed down and cured, I vaselined it down and added another clay wall to start the other half of the mold.

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Here's the back of Raphael's head curing. The waiting is the hardest part I think...wondering what the hell lies beneath that. Did I get all the damned bubbles worked out? Only time will tell.
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I was able to finally force off the mannequin yesterday. Should have warmed up the clay in the oven in the first place, but I wasn't thinking. Anyway, cracks galore like you couldn't imagine. I fixed it up what I could with crazy glue, and today I'm going to fix it up as best as I could with Super Sculpey and bake that to cure.

Ashton saw all the cracks and he said, "Wow. You were finally able to take out that thing?"

Yes, I said with dread.

"Cool!"

God I love him. Mommy just can't do any wrong.
 
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