Thursday, April 12, 2007

The pains of being... well... covered in plaster...

Myself and some friends have recently been trying to make a head cast for some special effects makeup. It should have been fairly simple. It should have been over like that. It wasnt.

You see, even with liberal amounts of Vasoline, the plaster mask (about 2cm thick and very sturdy) stuck to my friends face- by the hairs. Everything. Eyebrows, eyelashes, beard regrowth. What had happened is he had had a shower beforehand, resulting in the hairs of his face being waterlogged. The Vasoline clung to his skin, but slid right off of his hairs, allowing each and every one of them to bond to the plaster.

Well...

$16 worth of bandages, $4 worth of plaster, a butter knife, spoon and trip to the hospital later he was once again plaster free. The sad thing was that the cast would have been perfect, even getting the detail of his pores. The worst thing is that eyelashes take their sweet arse time growing back...

Lesson-
-If you are using it as a lubricant, only apply vasoline to dry hair!
-Use something other than plaster if you are willing to fork out. You can find better stuff here in the form of alginates, a spongy foamy material made out of a kind of sea weed. Expensive, but designed specifically for life casting.

Interested in this sort of stuff? We experiment in Vacume forming, armour, costumes, prop creation and monster/alien/special effects mask making.

Want to know more? Drop us an email at:
monster.menagerie@gmail.com

2 comments:

Matt said...

hahahahahahaha man i feel your friends pain we did plasta masks back in year 8 @ high skool and we used vass and yes the vass didnt work and i spent half the day walking around skool with a stupid ass mask on till the ladies in the office sent me to the hospital to get it of...akward 4 me lol

Jeebuz said...

Yeah... I bet it was a really educational experience, hey?