Neill Gorton's Prosthetics Course: Week 3

Week three in the studio went very rapidly to say the least.  Even with staying back late three nights this week.  This week was pretty jammed packed as I was moving between three different projects during the week: running platgel pieces for a nose for a Friday application, sculpting and moulding a mutant plant which I intended to run in foam latex and tinkering with my bust sculpt copying a lifecast.  I decided to stop working on the form of my bust sculpt this week and start concentrating on some of the detailing. This week was going to be the week I got this sculpt into molds but the sculpt still needs a couple more days work.

My tutor at Millenium FX, Dave Bonnywell, gave me some good instruction on some sculptural changes to my alien plant suckered to someone's face which made the whole thing both more interesting and more detailed.  I probably could have worked a little longer on it but needed to get it into a mold this week.

After a prosthetics application demo by Dave on Thursday we applied and painted up our pieces that we had been working on last week.  Getting okay pieces out of my nose mold was a challenge, even for the seasoned platgel runner working at Millenium.  She found a way around the problem by lacquering the negative and loads of release. My sculpt had a stick point in the negative of the mold and was too fine in places, as I wanted a super fine piece.  A bit of a minor sculpting error I won't be making again.  And funnily enough, they same sorts of problems I've had with prosthetics manufacture in the past, still exist at a professional level.  It's certainly more of an art than science and materials can act weirdly even in the hands of capable professionals!  So interesting lessons learned.  And while I wasn't totally happy with the sculpt or the appliance, I'm pretty happy with my paintwork and the effect of shifting Lucy's ethnicity towards a more Semetic look. For future reference the application and paint work took me approximately 2 and a quarter hours.

Dave Bonnywell doing an application demo:

Lucy looking 'normal':

With new nose and colouration:

Shifted ethicity:

Going into week four, I've been doing some sketching and started gathering reference pics for my final portfolio piece. I've given myself a bit of a challenge: a partial animatronic pull over mask. Very excited about starting work on that!