Sliced Leg SFX Silicone Prosthetic

Hey guys,

Today's blog is all about my sliced leg effect, you can call it the warm up to Halloween as I've got a few ideas that I want to create as well as one big idea for a live Demonstration at +Blackburn College  for their open day event in October (those of you who follow me on Facebook or Instagram will know what that character is.)

As some of you know I have been experimenting with silicone prosthetic, its something that really interests me as its can be incredibly life like in both touch, movement and visually. It's pretty expensive but worth it if you want the realism.

I began the prosthetic by creating a mould, I just used some monster clay (favourite clay to use but is quite hard, melts well though) and then create the mould. Below you can see the mould is the blue piece which is created by a silicone based product called Mold Star 16 by Smooth On. There are different types of Mold Star, 16 is a fast setting one with a 6 minute pot life and 30 minute cure time which means that if your quick at working its perfect but if not perhaps try Mold Star 15 which has the pot life 50 minutes and a cure time of  about 3-4 hours. +Smooth-On  products can be purchased via their website http://www.smooth-on.com or if your from the UK you might be better buying it from +Bentley Advanced Materials via http://www.benam.co.uk , they also have a handy tutorial video on there about using the product!

 

After creating the mould, I moved on to creating the prosthetic by encapsulating the silicone using bald cap plastic. Meaning I coated the mould in bald cap plastic (after applying a release agent) and then once this was dried I poured in the silicone. This silicone is again a Smooth On product which can be purchased at +Bentley Advanced Materials called Ecoflex Platinum Silicone which is extremely soft and flexible. To create the felsh colour I added Silc-Pig which is a pigment specific for silicone as well as red flocking which gives a multi-dimensional colouring by colouring the "background"

 

Once the prosthetic piece was done its ready to be applied, for this application I used my new adhesive; Telesis 7 Silicone Adhesive which is a fantastic product the only down side is that its expensive. Its taken me a while to save up for it but it really do glue well.

 

Now the fun part...not that anything before this wasn't fun but this is the really fun messy bit...colouring and blood!

So as I love my skin illustrators so much I used them...I used mainly my FX palette and 5 blood palette both are perfect for casualty effects and gory effects. I love how you can create such a nice wash of colour that doesn't over power the effect. As you can see below, the prosthetic coloured without any blood.

 

 

Once you have the colour right you can go ahead and add the bloods. Whenever I'm teaching sfx I always check my students work before they add the blood because blood can hide a multitude of sins and dodgy edges. (Word of warning to my new Level 3 Media Makeup students starting in September.)

 

My favourite bloods to use are those by Bloody Marvellous, who do a selection of sfx products including liquid bloods and wound fillers.

With this effect I used both liquid and thick bloods in dark.

 

 

 As you can see below, the colour is fantastic for dark venous blood. The top swatch is the liquid blood which you can see is a little more watery in consistency with a slightly more transparency and runs very easily. The next sample is the thick blood which is a lot more dense in colour as well as being more stable and doesn't run quiet as easily as the liquid.

 

The next product that I used, also from Bloody Marvellous, is the wound fillers. The first one is scratch blood and then congealed blood. I love these wound fillers so much as they are really realistic and easy to apply...except the scratch blood which is a little more jelly like making positioning a little more work but totally worth the extra work.

 

 

As you can see from the swatches, that scratch blood, which is the orangey colour is very sticky and gel like in consistency. The congealed blood is far more solid and adds fantastic depth in colour and texture.

 

 

Altogether you get a fantastic realistic effect. The colours and texture work really well to create that lovely gory ripped skin effect.

 

 

 

 

Am happy with the piece and can't wait to try more effects using a similar techniques.

 

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Bye for now lovelies!

District 9 "Prawn" Alien Special Effects Makeup Video

Pirates of the Caribbean makeup tutorial

Ok so here it is finally, the blog to go with the video!

My apologies for taking sooooo long to do this blog, its been a hectic couple of weeks due to the start of the new term, my new gang of creative makeup artist as well as my previous gang of new makeup artists becoming my official "crew". I've been uber busy working on a kick ass series of workshops for my makeup artists in training to get their creative teeth into.

I have been meaning to do a lot of product reviews in Inglot cosmetics as I seem to have a small collection of their eyeliner gels but its just been so busy and you know me I'll fit it in some where, keep checking in and subscribe, like, follow my other social sites for up to date posts on what's going on.

Ok so on with the Pirates of The Caribbean goodness, this character was originally inspired by coral, I wanted to create a coral monster ... which I am still going to do at some point but whilst I was sketching some ideas out Bootstrap Bill popped into my head so I decided to do a character inspired by him.

First port of call was the sculpting, now I am trying to challenge myself further with the details within the sculpts and I think that am slowly getting there.

 

As you can see from the above image, I wanted a focal point on the character with a lot of detail going on and then less detail on the other side of the face.

 

Casted the sculpt in the normal way, with my plaster and created my gelatine prosthetic piece. For once it came out clean with little tidying up required for the piece to fit, I was slightly concerned with the fit around the eye but figured I would patch it up on application creating another "fold" to the coral.

 

 

The other pieces which were attached to the opposite side to the coral consisted of limpets, starfish and those ickle sea anemone which I thought would fit nicely around the coral piece just to give some more texture. Plus I thought they were cute, fiddly to make because the tentacle bits had to be made and place separate to the body.

I created all these piece in the same way I created the main piece, sculpted them, casted them then ran them in gelatine.

 

The above was the tester piece I did for the limpets. With this character I was using a mixture of skin illustrator palettes and @MelProductsUSA to colour the pieces as well as building up the edges with silicone gel.

It seems to have worked well, my intention was to create the illusion that the limpets were poking though the skin, growing up out of the skin. I think it worked, what do you guys think?

Unlike my previous characters, this one was handed painted. I didn't use my airbrush machine for this one and I think it looks just as good.
The textures was perfect for the character as well as the colours that I used (Brilliant, #MelproductsUSA monster kit!)

 

My favourite part of the makeup was the veins on the neck, I used #Bdellium tools SFX brush set for the application and their thin brush teamed with Skin Illustrator FX palette worked a treat for making these veins.

 

I would definitely recommend investing in a set of the SFX brushes from Bdellium because they make it so easy to get the detail in and colour on in a realistic way.

 

I am contemplating doing this character as a short course to teach at Blackburn College but am unsure. Would like to learn the skills to create a character like this? Is it something your interested in? Let me know!

 

So there you have it, my Pirates of The Caribbean Inspired makeup, its a short blog but if you look below this one to the previous blog their is a link to the tutorial video up on my YouTube Channel now. Check it out.

 

More images of the prosthetic character can be seen on my Facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/Ruth.E.Moulden.MUA

 

Up to date images of my current projects can be found on my Instagram @ ruthemouldenmua

 

xRx

My first Silicone prosthetics and silicone mould making!! Yay!

Silicone has been one of those prosthetics materials that I have been dying to try out, as you all know from previous posts I am saving up for a sfx prosthetics course but I'm determined to continue to experiment and challenge myself further in preparation.

The reason why am so interested in silicon is because its a material which closely mimics skin, if the prosthetic is created properly. Out of all the prosthetic materials (that I know of) its is the most realistic for skin's translucency and therefore is used often to create skin effects, casualty effects, ageing etc.


When I went to IMATS this year I was focused on purchasing the products, equipment for creating silicone prosthetic pieces; not massive full face piece just small casualty style pieces, start small and work up. I was delighted when I found Form X's booth, they had put together a kit for creating silicone pieces which contained everything for sculpting (minus the tools), creating the moulds and creating the pieces.


The kit contained; Mould Star parts A and B for creating the mould, Ecoflex parts A and B for creating the silicone, clay, form cap, silicone pigment tint, red flock and a ickle tub of vaseline. Everything needed  for creating a silicone prosthetic.
 

 

The first step in this endeavour is to create what ever it is you want to turn in to a prosthetic. As usual I came up with a million and one different ideas...just to test it out!

I though casualty effects would be the best effect to create to test out the realism of the product as well as help me improve my realism with these sort of effects, it also allows me to play with my Skin Illustrator palettes.

 

So here are the two sculpts for the moulds, I made a cut (above) and torn skin (below) effect. Pretty basic but remember this is the first time I've ever done this so I wanted to build up my skills first.

 

The next step is to prepare the Mould Star which will be used to create the moulds. Its important to measure equal parts of A and B in order to ensure that the moulds set properly. This can be done on weighing scales (make sure you reset the weight when you put your container on the scales) or use measuring cups, which is what I did.

 

 

Make sure that you create a barrier around your sculptures, this needs to be pretty secure to make sure the Mould Star doesn't run out. I used card board and strong tape which I attached to my tile board.

What you need to remember at this stage is that to avoid air bubbles you need to pour the mixture from a height, obviously take care not to pour it all over the place!!

 

I'd say it took about 45 minutes for the mould to harden fully and was pretty easy to release from the sculpture without any problems.

 

The mould is very sturdy and flexible, it also appears to have done a good job capturing the detailing in the sculptures without any problems. Even the tiny areas are detailed.

These next few steps were pretty tricky to get right, and it took a few go's to find the right methods and measurements.

 

The products need to again be measured in equal parts using the same methods as outlined above. More Ecoflex can be purchased from Smooth On or Bentley Advance Materials however other prosthetic suppliers do have their own similar branded products e.g. PS Composite Ltd. If your experimenting for the first time you will definitely need to top up on products, the brands mentions are ace plus they don't mind you asking questions if your unsure!
 

Once you've got the 2 parts equally mixed added a little red flocking and skin tone pigment. These two components create the translucent skin tones, the multi tonal effects. The problem with this step is its all trial and error, there is not an exact measurement to follow. I took a few tries to get this right and it changes with each batch you make. So my advice is ... don't get frustrated if you don't add the right amount and it comes out too dark or too light!! Start small until your used to the measurements and mixtures.

 

 
To prepare the moulds you need to make sure you have properly ensured that the prosthetic piece can be easily released from the mould. Add Vaseline to the mould followed by spraying several layers of "FormCap" plastic (used to create bald caps) mixed with acetone to thin the mixture using an airbrush gun or paint the layers manually. This step is very very important to do right, if you don't you will never be able to release piece from the mould ending up with rips all over the shop!

 

To make it easy for yourself in both application and releasing attach a thin card board frame around the prosthetic, this will give the piece a little structure and help you when it comes to applying/blending the thin edges.

 

 

As you can see, I made quiet a few attempts at getting the silicone piece just right!

I either made the piece too thick or didn't put enough product for releasing or the pigment was all wrong!! Eventually I did it though, I finally got a batch right!

 

The application process is quiet simple, you just need to take your time and be care with the blending process. In this application I used a piece that was slightly too thick in areas around the edge, the thinner the edge the easy the blending is.

I used Pros-Aide as my adhesive just cause its my go to in most instances, once you have positioned and glued the piece (frame and all) in place you can begin to blend the edge. Use some isopropyl alcohol on a cotton bud to melt the edges away, in the process melt the frame off the piece as well. Once you've done this you can seal the edges with Pros Aide, dry and powder with translucent powder.

Now, ready for painting, I used my fabulous Skin Illustrator palette from PS Composites. The FX palette has some good colours but the basic one will also do.

 

 

You first aim when painting the piece is to get the skin layers just right, especially the colours of the fat and tissue layers of the dermis. Its important to make sure you understand the real colours, which means a bit of medical research is necessary when doing SFX, if your squeamish its not a good area go into!

 

Once the colours are just right, you can continue with the blood. I got some bloods and wound fillers from Bloody Marvellous who were at IMATS this year. 

 

 

As you can see the bloods are very realistic with good texture. I love those product and I can't wait to use the other bloods in future projects!

 

I even had a bit of fun after with stiches just to test out just how realistic silicone is to skin. The stiches went through so easily and the movement that was created was very close how skin would react. There is a video clip up on my instragram, if you want to have a look and am sure at some point I will be putting up the full video on youtube.

 

I have to say silicone is an incredible material to use, the way it feels and moves works very well for recreating sfx. Although it is difficult to use at first, practice defiantly makes perfect. I would like to continue practicing with these products and perhaps make a larger piece for the face.

 

Thanks for reading and don't forget to check out my other social sites;

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Bye for now,

 

Ruth x