I decided to go as Kiefer Sutherland’s evil vampire from The Lost Boys.

I decided I’d have a go at making a gelatin appliance. Previously I’ve only ever done foamed latex and putty appliances. So, Gareth cast my face which gave me a positive to sculpt on top of. I changed the shape of my nose, added higher cheekbones and a very prominent brow. I then made a mold of that.

The gelatin came in a 1kg block and seemed to be quite sturdy stuff. I popped a cupful into the microwave until it was nice and runny. Poured into the mould and squished the two halfs together. Left for about an hour, I opened the mold and out came a pretty good appliance.

I was kind of disappointed that what should have been thin rubbery edges seemed to be quite fragile, almost like the gelatin had absorbed moisture and went a little mushy. Perhaps it’s not best suited to ultracal plaster molds ?

Anyway, it applied ok.. the edges were a little rough but the translucency of the gelatin worked well.

Here’s the results.

I helped a friend with his costume, he was going as skeletor so I thought it would be good to create a decent skeletor skull that he could wear perfectly on his face. It has a seperate jaw so that it would be able to move when he talked.

First off, I had to cast his face.

Which resulted in this positive cast from the mold.

On top of this I sculpted the skeletor face in plastilene, basing it partly on the animated version and partly on the live action movie.

I then used silicon putty to coat the sculpture in a nice thick layer as I would be casting the finished piece in hard polyurethane resin. Here’s the finished painted piece.

Need to get a better photo of it being worn, but here is the final piece.

Started the paint job, originally uploaded by Jamie Durrant.

The first pass at the paint job. I’m using pax paint, which is essentially a 50/50 mixture of prosaide and acrylic paint. If you need a wash that is less opaque, then use some water in the mixture.

I need to go back and add more detail and definition to the mask. Primarily using sponged to paint on layers of paint, with some more detailed work with a brush.

Ok, so I’ve pulled a couple of heads from the molds now. I’m going to be filling one with expanded foam so that it can be displayed. Here’s my first pulled one, with all the flash that will need to be removed. It took about 5 layers of latex to get a thickness of approx 4mm. Any thinner and it wouldn’t have been able to support it’s shape.

Molding Latex Creature Head, originally uploaded by Jamie Durrant.

I used around five layers of plaster to give me the thickness and support I needed. With every new batch of plaster I apply, I add some acrylic paint. This colours the plaster so that I can be sure that I have completely covered the previous layer.

Molding Latex Creature Head, originally uploaded by Jamie Durrant.

I used a hard setting dental plaster to make the molds. Unbeknownst to me, it take around 40 minutes to get to a decent consistency like double cream. I use the back of my hand to flick plaster onto the model. This helps to not capture any air bubbles on the sculpure. As the plaster thickens, I pay special attention to those areas would are like to problematic, ie. deep set wrinkles, inside the mouth/ears.

Creating Latex Creature Head, originally uploaded by Jamie Durrant.

I was in two minds as to use a brass shim divider or a clay wall. As this sculpture was built on top of a plaster head, I didn’t think that the thickness of the clay would support any brass shims I placed along the dividing wall, so I went with a clay shim.

I always find it a difficult process when doing these dividers as it’s so easy to damage the sculpture. I made some registration marks in the wall and then it was over to molding the little bugger.

Creating Latex Creature Head, originally uploaded by Jamie Durrant.

I got to the point where I was happy that I couldnt add much more detail to the sculpture. I coated it with a fine shellac so that it wouldn’t dry out in the molding process, it’s also less like to be damaged by tools/fingers in the fraught business of plaster molding.

Update : Finished, cast in latex and painted.

Creating Latex Creature Head, originally uploaded by Jamie Durrant.

Added more wrinkles to the neck to give it a little bit of interest. We’re starting to approach the point at which adding more detail to one area, invariably causes fingermarks on another. Again, this wouldnt be so much of a problem with a harder oil based clay like Chavant.