New Decaying Corpse Sculpt

Just finished my first decaying corpse sculpt! The plan is to make a fibreglass mould of this later this week with Mady. The sculpt was quickly done in plasticine on an old stone life cast. Plasticine is much faster to work with compared to the Chavant NSP clay I've been using recently for making prosthetics. It is also a fair bit stickier and I had a little ball of clay in my left hand constantly while sculpting just for removing hairs and particles.









This sculpt is somewhat more an experiment with textures and working with plasticine as well as practicing two part fibreglass mould making than a serious piece for portfolio, having said that it has turned out okay for a really fast sculpture. I also refinished the surface with white spirits but made the mistake of doing this indoors and then had to move the fumey sculpt to the doorway and get a fan blowing the fumes out the door...

Work on A Hesistant Move

Alana and I (as assistant!) recently did the makeup for independent filmmaker Kim Miles' latest work A Hesistant Move. Kim does really interesting filmmaking that calls for stylized makeup with pale skin and dark eyes. We had fun on set and Kim is lovely director to work with. Hopefully we'll get another chance to work with her again. Here are a couple of shots of the makeups from her upcoming short film:







The funny thing is that the makeups almost look a bit normal in these photos with the lighting, but to the eye they looked far more extreme. Clare freaked out a little when she first saw how pale I had gone with her makeup, but next to each other they all sort of fit into the same world.

Making a mould for 3D transfers: take 2

Today I made a new mould for 3D transfers. This came about after talking with Brian Sipe at IMATS and getting some useful tips from him. I has also recently tried making some encapsulated silicone prosthetics using our existing 3D transfer moulds and while some of the sculpts and moulds we have are pretty good, it is noticeable that our earlier moulds have a few technical issues. Another reason for this blog post is because my earlier post on making a mould for 3D transfers (found here) makes me cringe a little.

To begin with sculpt the 3D transfers onto either sheet styrene or foamcard (the longer route for this is to float off the sculpts from a positive of the model who they will be applied to later then rework them on a flat surface). The ones shown here are a series of bullet wounds to be applied to the body and a cut to be applied to the side of the lips on the face.



After taking my time sculpting these as neatly and with as fine an edge as possible, I build a simple box mould using foamcard, pins and duct tape (alternatively this mould can be made out of High Impact Polystyrene Sheets or HIPS and glue). Make sure your walls are high enough for the level of silicone you are going to pour into this to make your 3D transfer mould. I'm comfortable with using foamcard, pins and duct tape for this purpose and they are very easy to work with, but I'm also planning on using HIPS for this purpose for future moulds as it looks faster.



After the box mould is stuck together it is worth double checking any areas that might leak. This time I used a condensation (Tin) based silicone to make the mould for the transfers. Previously I had used a platinum silicone to make the mould from, which does give other options in terms of either doing prosaide transfers OR encapsulated platinum silicone pieces. Brian Sipe reckons that using tin silicone for the mould gives a bit harder mould that works better for 3D transfers. Remember to always mix your silicone thoroughly!




After the silicone has set, pull apart your box mould walls and you should have flat silicone mould for 3D transfers.



I am also planning on buying some better quality tattoo transfer paper and having another go at doing some more 3D transfers as well as experimenting with encapsulated silicone pieces for the same purposes. (See an earlier attempt at applying 3D transfers here.)

IMATS 2010

Last weekend Alana and I headed to Sydney for IMATS 2010.



Highlights for me included: watching Alana's classmates Ebony and Rachael compete in the student competition; watching Gino Acevedo do a silicone prosthetic application; meeting Brian Sipe and watch him do a character transformation using 3d transfers. Lowlights: me being sick with a headcold! Boo!

Prosthetic makeup by Gino:



Alana really enjoyed Emma Hack's and Donna Mee's sessions.

A cool makeup by Emma:



Ebony's amazing makeup on Rachael that won 2nd place in the student comp:



Ebony was asked by Mr Ben Nye junior while working on her application what products she was using and as it turns out she was using almost exclusively Ben Nye products...she should get a sponsorship deal!

Fake vomit bile recipe

Recently we had to create some edible fake vomit for a film called Safe. However, it wasn't just any old run of the mill vomit. Oh no, this one had to look like vomit of someone who had taken a lot of pills on an empty stomach! So more bile and less solid.

While there were hundreds of different internet spew recipes none of them came close to what was actually needed on set for this story. The spirit of invention is necessity when working on film, so here's what we came up with:

Ingredients

1 packet of Milk Bottles (for those of you in the US: soft white gelatin based candy)
2 litres of apple juice
1 packet of gelatin
1 box of rice flour
500ml Milk
1 litre of water
Disposable plastic cups

Not all of these ingredients were used up making this recipe. The big advantage of this recipe is that it looks great and tastes good with it being a bit like an oddly textured apple dessert in an actor's mouth. First I made up 500ml of a watered down 50:50 apple jelly using the gelatin. Zap the mixture in the microwave then put it in the fridge to set. While this is setting chop up the Milk Bottles (soft white candy) into small pill sized, pill shaped pieces. This does take some time. Then use 2 teaspoons of apple jelly per disposable cup, mash it a bit with a fork. Add a dash of apple juice into each cup. It is a good idea to production line a number of cups for multiple takes on set. Then add a dash of water. Then add some of the chopped up Milk Bottle candy pieces. Then 1 teaspoon of milk and 1 teaspoon of rice flour per cup. Stir well before giving to actor and voila! They are ready to look like they are hurling up pills and bile! One thing to keep in mind is how much a person can fit in their mouth so you'll only really need 3/4 of a cup of fake vomit. Enjoy!