The Last Of Us - Clicker Prosthetic

This is a old post that should of been done a while ago but because of my health issues it sort of got put on the back burner. Better late then never!

So last Halloween I was hired to create the characters/monsters for a zombie run at a local Youth Group. This event was your typical zombie run, where groups solve puzzles to move on to the next area where they will be challenged again, the cool thing was the Youth Centre is massive...I mean multiple floors with indoor and roof top football pitches so the amount of characters needed was a lot.
One of the areas in the run was a maze, which the groups had to navigate through in the dark...it was one of my favourite rooms. I thought the best thing to have in a maze in the pitch dark, a Clicker. Those of you who play The Last Of Us will know exactly what a Clicker is. Those who are not familiar, its a zombie like person who has basically been taken over by a fungus (think that picture of an ant with a fungus bit growing out of it!) and it makes clicking noises, really creepy croaky clicking noises that tells you one is near. Having this in a maze in the dark was amazing!! It freaked everybody out, including me and I created it!

Here's the sculpt that I created, there will be a fast sculpting video of me creating this on my YouTube Channel on Thursday so make sure that you are subscribed to me on there.

 {{{ https://www.youtube.com/user/RuthMouldenMUA }}} 

And here is the fabulous Katie modelling the prosthetic piece applied on the night, thanks to my assistant Lisa as well!

Honestly, I love how it came out. I think she looks creepy and Katie did the clicking noises perfectly!

I love this image, I think it totally fits with the whole The Last Of Us style and Katie definitely made it even better in the maze!

Most of the prosthetic products used were purchased from PS Composites Ltd which included the Monster Clay used to sculpt the piece. I also used tools from Ken Banks and some cheap clay tools from Amazon.

It was coloured using all Skin Illustrator palettes and splattered with blood from Ben Nye (dark blood)

I will be trying to post a blog and video more regularly now, so am thinking Monday's are blog uploads and Thursdays are YouTube uploads, so make sure your following me on both as well as checking out my Facebook and Instagram @Ruth E Moulden MUA

See you next time,

xRx

Halloween SFX Makeup: Exposed Eyeball

Sorry for the uber long silence...but aaammm baaaack!!

Here have a Halloween tutorial video to make up for my neglect of you guys. I will be uploading the behind the scenes creation of this which will include products and how I created the piece soooo hit that follower button and stay tuned to my blog!

xRx

Walking Dead Zombie Girl Character

Hey guys,

I have been keeping busy as normal, planning some characters for Halloween as well as sorting out this years Zombie Walk at +Blackburn College

 I realised that I need put up a follow up post for the Walking Dead Zombie prosthetic that I created. As everybody knows I love zombies and monsters and things that go bump in the night and one of ultimate favourite TV shows is of course Walking Dead. It would be a dream come true to work on a show like that...even if its just assisting!

So the as you can see from previous posts, I moulded a prosthetic face based on Walking Dead zombie world and painted it up...what I didn't show you was the finished piece on my face! So here it is...

Personally am really happy with it...I think its definately better then my past zombies which is always the aim. I feel that the Skin Illustrators really made a massive different in the effect of the zombie not to mention my new +Sigma Beauty FX brushes from +Bruna Nogueira from the fantastic Hollywood Makeup Lab (I've recently received a book from them which I will be doing a review on, very soon so stay tuned for that one!)

I attached the prosthetic with the fantastic adhesive Telesis 7, I think I already raved about this product in my previous blog but there I go again...its the best glue that I've used to date and didn't ruin my skin afterwards! Definitely recommend this to everybody and everyone!

 

You can check out the blog about the colour up of the prosthetic for more information about brushes and skin illustrators used. If you check out my YouTube channel can also wait a video of the colour up with a review of the FX brushes used.

So there you have it, I will definitely be revisiting my walking dead zombies, probably for Halloween which am planning to do quiet a few monsters for you guys.

 

Please Please check out my YouTube Channel to see more information about the colouring of the prosthetic piece here -----> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mquRQlyIlL4

 

Check out the Sigma FX Brush by +Bruna Nogueira  Review here -------> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EigHmTbiWeU

 

 

Check out my other sites and follow me on:

 Facebook ----> https://www.facebook.com/Ruth.E.Moulden.MUA

Twitter -----> https://twitter.com/RM_Makeup

Instagram ----> ruthemouldenmua

 

Bye for now,

xRx

Walking Dead Zombie Paint Up Using Sigma FX brushes and Skin Illustrator.

 

Hey my lovelies,

 

Todays blog is a bit of a review as well as the second part of my zombie prosthetic...the paint up!!

 

A couple of weeks ago the marvellous people at Sigma send me this fabulous package of makeup brushes and makeup to test out.

 

I am so unbelievably thankful to +Sigma Beauty for sending this fantastic package of beautiful goodies, am one lucky makeup artist!

 

The brush set was sent to me was the SigmaFX brush set which consists of 11 specially designed FX brushes, all suitable and specially designed for a different aspect of SFX applications. The brushes were designed by makeup artist and founder of Hollywood Makeup Lab, Bruna Nogueira.

 

The makeup was a welcome surprise, as I didn't think I would be sent extra's. I thought it was just the FX brushes but yay!! Thankie Thankie Sigma!!

I will review these products in later blog, promise!

 

I love all the brushes and for this prosthetic application they were perfect. I have created a quick video looking at each brush individually as well as a little bit about what each one could be used for.

Check out the video here: Quick Sigma Fx brushes Review 

 

I decided that for painting up my zombie prosthetic I would use manual and that the Sigma FX brushes would be perfect to do the job...as well as enable me to review the brushes as worked.

 

 

So here is the setup...my freshly pulled prosthetic piece, Sigma set and skin illustrator pallettes. Normally I would be using my airbrush gun but as I have just got a few new palettes from +PS Composites Ltd and +PPI Premiere Products (All aquired when I went to +United Makeup Artist Expo this year)

 

So the first palette is "American Horror" created for American Horror Story's Makeup Dept. Head, Eryn Krueger Mekash.  The palette contains two colors specifically designed by Eryn Krueger Mekash's makeup crew for the American Horror Story series.  'Coven' and 'Assylum'. Costing $80 from +PPI Premiere Products  or £69.80 from +PS Composites Ltd 

I've been wanting this palette for a long time and finally I got it!! This is my first large palette from Skin Illustrator as all my other palette are the small "on set" palettes.

 

The next two palettes that I used for the prosthetic was my "NecroMania" and "FX" which as mentioned before are my smaller "On Set" palettes which have the same colours as the larger palettes just small...

 

These are available for +PPI Premiere Products for $55

The FX palette is perfect for any casualty stimulation or FX bruises/cuts, I have definitely recommended to my students that they should buy this palette for their kits.

 

So I first used #melproductsUSA in "Corpse", airbrushing this base down using my #mistair airbrush gun.

 

I then proceed to layer multiple colours down manually using the #sigmafx brush set. My idea was to get inspiration from "Walking Dead" by using post- mortem style colours to give a rotting flesh sort of effect.

 

I've been working on building my painting abilities for a while and I think I achieved in this project.

 

 

And there you have the final look of the prosthetic. You can check out a video of the full application HERE

 

For more photo's of this prosthetic and to stay up to date with all my projects and crazy madness in the makeup industry check out my facebook page: HERE

Twitter: HERE

Instagram: @ruthemouldenmua HERE

 

xRx

 

 

 

Walking Dead Style Zombie Prosthetic

Hi Guys,

Its been a while hasn't it...lately I just seem to be all over the place and I will admit, I have been neglecting my blogs and YouTube and all of that lovely social goodness that keeps me connected to you guys.
Today's blog is all about a new prosthetic piece that I've created, using some of my new toys which I will be writing a review on all of them individually in more detail.
I've also been toying with the idea of doing some hair blogs/videos as I have had a few people comment about wanting to learn how I do my hair so that's something to look forward to!

So on with the zombie goodness!

As usually I start off with my clay and my Ken Banks tools. For this sculpt I used my new Monster Clay which I got from +PS Composites Ltd when I went to +United Makeup Artist Expo this year.

The clay has consistency similar to that of hard plasticine but was easier to sculpt then my other clays and I found myself able to add a lot more detail into this sculpt then any other prosthetic piece I have done before. Definite thumbs up for this clay!

With this Zombie, I was looking at working on my skills in adding texture to the skin as well as taking a more walking dead style vibe. As you can see I was testing out moulding the teeth rather then putting in my resin teeth. I didn't like it. I think it was the shape of the mouth that just didn't sit well anatomically...felt a bit cheesy B Movie zombie rather then Walking Dead Zombie.

The first initial sculpt went well but when I sat back and took another look the next day, I decide that there were certain aspect that didn't work (such as the mouth as mentioned before.)

So keeping with the first sculpt as the "base" I built up. Am always telling my students that test runs and taking time to perfect a character is a must; that time you take to really sit back and study what you just create will enable to you self assess. Self assessing is always good because it means your taking ownership of your work and building your skills based on you instinct of what works and work you see as needing practice or reshaping or whatever.

 

This is the "rebuild" sculpt. As you can see there are plenty of changes from the original.

The mouth is a little more atomically correct with a better shape for the face, I feel anyways. I had to keep referring back to medical books for the shape and placement of the teeth.

 

More texture was added to the skin with deeper wrinkles and lines to add a bit more of a rotted, aged zombie look. This zombie was not fresh!!

I really went deep with some of those lines as I wanted to make sure there was enough detail to work with on the final piece.
The eye bags were a little difficult for me as I tried to sculpt them stronger and then they went too strong and then they disappeared sooooo this is what I finally ended up with.

In the next blog I will be focusing on the colouring of the piece, for some weird reason I forgot to take a photo of the piece after I casted but as you can see from the below setup...it came out pretty well. The plaster am using at the moment is a bit rubbish but it still didn't ruin any of the detail work I laid down.

Please stay tuned for the next blog, as you can see I will also be reviewing the Sigma FX brush set and Skin Illustrator palettes, pictured above with my prosthetic.

Bye for now Lovelies!

xRx

Halloween "Creeps and Creatures" designing and creating the prosthetics.

Am alive!!

I have to apologise for my absent with this blog, there has been a ridiculous amount of work going on which caused me to stop updating this blog BUT fear not I have returned with many creations and application that I want to share with the world!

So in this blog I will be detailing my Creeps and Creatures creation that were sculpted, casted and creating for the purposes of Blackburn Youth Zone's Halloween event. This has been the best job to date, I absolutely loved creating all these fantastic characters and I would not complain if this was my full time job; just creating monsters and creatures! Dream job.

Like with any creation, it all begins with a brief and whole load of doodles and design plans. The characters that I was given to create for where these rather marvellous nightmare delights....

We have "Exorcise character", Morgue victim, Grave Yard/Guide, Clown and "Chaser." Now there was a few changes on the day to these characters and a few adaptions needed due to the models changing which is a valuable lesson to anyone thinking of becoming a makeup artist or tackling this sort of project. ALWAYS HAVE BACK UPS!

Now my "Exorcise" characters was designed with the intent to use all manual effects to create the character. Ridge Collodion was my go to, this is an amazing product for creating fantastic realistic scars and indentations in the skin. I also aimed to use contouring and highlighting to give the illusion of sunken in features and an overall haggard look to the model.

The "Graveyard digger/Guide" was the character that was intended to guide the public around the areas of the "Haunted House", showing them the puzzles and making sure they took the right turn. This was one of the characters that changed on the day to "Mad Scientists", which was easy to adapt. I did create prosthetics pieces to change the features of the model.

 

What creepy demonic character isn't complete without a demonic brow ala Buffy The Vampire Slayer, this was part of my extra's kit for just incase I have an extra characters or the existing prosthetics don't fit the model. Everyone loves a demonic brow!

 

 

Quickest easiest way to change someone's face is to alter the shape/size of their nose and chin, which is the design plan I came up with for the Grave Diggers. I had the idea of character with sharp features (and teeth) similar to that of the Penguin from Batman. That creepy look with extra cuts/scars all over the face and again using highlighting and shading to contour the features to more sunken effect.

 

The next character I was brief on was for a character that chased the people around the event. I was told to do whatever I wanted but it has to be scary. So I came up with the cage face, as in the design plan behind the cage needs to appear black and the eyes need to be very dark.

As you will see soon this character once applied and the actors were in their costumes, scared the crap out of me!

 

 

Morgue Character was a cool one to create, they wanted my rib cast that I created for a different character. They wanted the model/actor to be led down on a morgue table with a cloth over them and to jump up when ever anyone was in the room. So they wanted a gruesome looking person rather then a monster. 

 

 

 The ribs took a while to create, as they made from latex rather then casted in gelatine like the other pieces. I needed the piece to be lighter then gelatine which meant using cotton and latex to build up in the mould rather then filling up the mould with latex.

This took about 3-4 days to fully complete and drying fully.

 

 

Love sculpting skulls, so I just had to have a clean half skull face for this morgue character. Teeth are enamel. 

The next characters was a bit of a homage to American Horror Story: Freak show, Twisty the clown. Love that character and it always instils fear into most people. So the mouth was inspired by that character with a few changes to the shapes.
The reason of the features are all manual applications with thick blood and manual cuts.

 

This character was my mad scientist one, well one the mad scientists. I had several actors who needs to talk so the makeup was kept manual on these characters and the big mouths were used on the ones that chased.

 

Here it is all painted up.

 

I had an absolute blast designing and sculpting these characters, in the next blog I will show you the end result and what happen on the night.

 

Don't forget to check out my Facebook, Instagram for up to date information on what's going on in my crazy crazy world.

 

I'll be trying super hard to keep up to date with this blog.

 

Any suggestions or requests just contact me in the contacts form.

 

 

Halloween Prosthetic Maddenss Prt 1 ZOMBIES!!!

Heyo my lovelies,

Its been a while since I've written out a blog for you guys but like always I have been a busy bee. For the first time this Halloween little moi designed all the characters and created all the prosthetics for a zombie run event held at Blackburn Youth Zone. I will admit this was a dream come true for me, its something I always wanted to do and its a new challenge for me.

Am going to do a series of blogs to cover this event as it was so massive and I want you lovely people to not be overloaded with words! So its split up into 3 different blogs...Zombies, Creatures and Creeps and the live event with final results.

The event which was held at Blackburn Youth Zone was a zombie run, in which groups of 12-18 year old started at the top of the building on the roof top and had to escape by completing various challenges to get out at the bottom and into a Halloween disco.

Promo video

 So my brief was to create 5 different zombies, 2 chasers (with the aim to be absolutely terrifying!), 2 grave diggers (which changed to mad scientists), a morgue victim with ribcage, clown, exorcist girl, 2 "butcher smilers" aaaaaaaaaand back up pieces for extra characters and staff members.

Designing has always been a lot of fun for me, I just zone out the rest of the world and design my characters looking at multiple ways of creating them. Its important to do this so you have your back up plan, just in case!
My zombies needed to be completely different from each other but look like they belong in the same environment.

Sculpting the pieces, as everyone knows is another of my favourite things to do, and I feel like my skills are progressing well, which is always a bonus! I've been trying to push myself with the textures of the pieces more which is what helps the piece come alive.

As usual am using wet clay as well as plastiline modelling clay, I would like to just use the plastiline for all projects but I don't have enough. Its one of those things that makes sculpting a whooole lot easier! Am also using Ken Banks tools for sculpting, these tools are amazing to use. Very easy to create smooth areas as well as textures quickly.

 

I decided to totally challenging myself with some of these characters being multiple prosthetics applications on one face. Which in the back of my head I worried whether it would work or not but what's life without a few challenges.

 

This prosthetic was my favourite to make!

I really wanted to try and create those muscle textures in the clay as well as bone. Took a lot of references pieces to get it to a point that I loved.

 

Jaw breaker, this one took ages to get right in my head. I wanted to make the zombie look like their jaw was unhinged and dislocated.

 

What's a zombie horde without a zombie whose all infected and lumpy. Lots of popped blisters and boils...yummy!

 

Of course we need to zombie brow...or two

 

My big daddy zombie, no face all rotten with bones and muscles on show and a funky boney nose!!

 

 I will admit, whilst sculpting and designing these zombies many many maaaaaany B horror movies were playing, Walking Dead and a lot of things with dead in the title. Its good reference...and makes for a fun day...night....week for all!

Sculpting took foooooorever with these zombies but once they were done, moulding began....

 

I decided for this prosthetic to use my fake dentist teeth to give the effect a realist look, they also clicked together when the mouth moved...added creepy element!

 

My beautiful infected, yucky zombie looking all green and full of oozy infection.

So happy with how this prosthetic turned out, really wanted to give that transition from bone to muscle as smoothly and realistically as possible and I think I achieved it. The false eye really set the piece off.

 

The trickiest prosthetic piece I did in this project, it was really difficult to sort the positioning out to make it look like a dislocated jaw with the torn skin around.

I was worried with this one, up until the actually application.

 

My absolute favourite zombie design, I really enjoyed painting this one up and the use of Bdellium SFX brushes really helped me add texture and blend the colours well. Unlike the other prosthetics I decided to sculpt the teeth rather then add the fake one's because I was worried about the movement of the actor being effected.

 

All the prosthetics were casted in gelatine that was purchased from PS Composites Ltd, this company are fantastic, they go above and beyond to make sure you get what you need. I find their products extremely good quality as well as great for the price.

 

Painted using Mel Products USA PAX paints and skin illustrator palettes predominately the FX palette. Love using these products as they work so well on the prosthetics, blend beautifully and cleanly with a natural look. Again its another product that is priced right for the job and well worth buying a kit or two from them.

 

Each piece was definitely made with love ... blood, sweat and tears but I think I have got better then my last work which is all I aim to do...get better and better and better.

 

Next weeks blog will focus on the other characters...the "Creeps and Creatures" and how they were sculpted and casted, followed by a blog focusing on the event and my Halloween creations that I did on myself!

 

I am planning to get more regular with my blogging, once a week...maybe more if your good!

 

 This weeks teaching is the introduction of Airbrushing techniques with my lovely level 3 and continuing Body Art assessments with my Level 2.

 

Get a sneak peak of the photos head over to my Instagram or Facebook page...like me, follow me, stalk me what ever to stay up to date and current with my work.

 

xRx

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