District 9 "prawn" prosthetics ... the making of....

Hey hey,
Well it appears I have created another one of my crazy crazy live demonstration characters for Blackburn College's most recent Open Event showing off what the college has to offer.
I love doing these events because I see them more as a chance to prove to prospective students who want to study media makeup what we can do and offer them. And I like to wow the crowds, its a case of "go big or go home" ... I get a little worried sometimes that I may not be able to top the last character but hey life's no fun without a few challenges!

This open day event was no exception and I aimed to top the last one...(which I'll admit I have not blogged about but check out facebook for the photos!)

A while ago I was challenged to recreate "District 9" prawn Alien, as usual, I don't back down to challenges so off I went designing.
Unlike the other characters I've done I wanted to create more costume/limb parts as well as play with doing a large silicone piece which I've never done before. (I've created small ones but never as big as this)

My design for this character was a mixture of the character, Wikus transforming into the Alien from the film but I wanted to take it bit further and give it a bit of "The Fly" sort of transformation with a full head prosthetic plus bald cap.

So the first thing you think about when you think of District 9 transformation...the hand...

 

As you can see it took quiet a few steps to get it right, starting with a washing up glove!

Add plenty of tape to get the shape of the fingers...

 

 

Little bit of good old latex and cotton wool to mould the details in the fingers....

 

 

Colour with Mel Products USA in delightful swampy green brown colours and voilà you have a "prawn" hand.....

 

 

 

So the next stage is the arm pieces, which as I mentioned before this is first time I have ever done a large scale silicone piece which was epic for me because silicone is one of those materials which can work out...sometimes doesn't. I've done smaller pieces before which worked out well so I figured why not!

 

For the silicone I used EcoFlex from Smooth On which I got in a starter silicone kits at IMATS last year....it was a very good kit, taught me a lot!!

 

 

First port of call...the casting of the piece....

 

 

As you can see I did multiple pieces just in case something went wrong or pieces didn't come out clean. If I've said it once, I've said it a million times...always be prepared for little whoopy daisy moments!

 

 

As you can see above...lots of just incases....

 

Now my favourite part of any character make...the face, cause its allll about the face face face baby!

Theres just something about sitting down for hours sculpting weird and wonderful creations that really puts me in a good mood.

With this Alien piece, there were a lot of logistics that needed working out...such as the bug eyes, the nose breathing hole and antenna.

Trial and error my friends....as well as some creative imagination whilst designing is the key to over come any problem.

 

Isn't he a delightful fella...I named him Fred...
Now I originally opted for a full face when designing but then decided to stop at the bottom lip as I wanted to create weird tentacle things to dangle down and disguise the lip. (Which you'll see below)
The bug eyes are in fact....Easter Egg packaging...yes that good old chocolate treat, I did have to maniple the shape a little to try and get that almond eye shape going.  

 

And here's the bad boy casted out in gelatine... works well...I did have to scoop out sections to relieve some of the weight as gelatine can be pretty heavy at times. But I was very pleased with how it came out.

 

Next step is colouring in!

Another one of those tasks that just chills me out, and I love using my IWATA airbrush to painting it all up. Again using Mel Products USA...I love the products they are amazing and come in a wide variety of colours. Easy to use, can be used neat or mixed with their mixing medium for use in an airbrush/thinning. Totally recommend them!

 

 

The eyes were painted using glass paints...as you can see the middle part is left as when I came to apply the piece I decided to paint the models eyes black so when you looked through the eye it looked like a pupil.

(Plus visibility was a little foggy with the paints all over and I really needed the model to be able to see!)

 

As you can see the dangly bits over the mouth work as a clear way to hide the "real" lips but still allow the model movement of the mouth/talk/eat...breath...

Plus they moved with the movements of the model which I thought looked really cool.

As you can see below I had to try it out! ....

 

 

So there you have the making of...

 

I will be uploading the application process in a later blog but I think I've held you attention for long enough. All the photo's from the event will be uploaded to my Facebook page, so feel free to have a little gander over there.

 

There is also an application video up on my YouTube, if your feeling intrigued as to how it all turned out.

 

Tomorrow am doing another event at Blackburn College with my wonderful media makeup students for Comic Relief which involves full body painting! This will be blogged at some point and if I can get a camera, I'll be filming parts again.

 

Don't forget to like, follow me on my other sites:

Facebook page @Ruth.E.Moulden.MUA

  Instagram @ruthemouldenmua

YouTube @RuthMouldenMUA

 

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.

 

 

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;

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/RuthMouldenMUA

 

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

 

Tumblr: http://ruthmua.tumblr.com/
 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RM_Makeup

 

Instagram: http://instagram.com/ruthemouldenmua

 

Bye for now,

 

Ruth x

White Walker / Ice Zombie Make Up Application

Check out my video of the application process of my White Walker character.....

White Walker Prosthetic

 This is a creation I've been hovering around completing for ages, its something that one of my friends from work challenged me to do and since Game Of Thrones is one of my favourite shows, I couldn't resist. The White Walker.
 
Once again am creating this with what I have, am not rich and am still saving up for my SFX courses which will show me the more advanced techniques. Having said that this is the first time I've attempted a full face which was quiet cool.
 
So it all starts with my initial design drawing, which took me a far while to complete with all them wrinkles and lines. I focused more on my skills in highlighting and shading with this one for obvious reasons...
 

 

Next, I started the sculpting. I'll admit after seeing this in the photographs, he does look like an angry White Walker...that's my creative stamp on the character. After all I don't like coping straight from the character, its got to have my own element to it.

 

 

Now time for the messy stage...casting!!!

For this one I decided extra strength was needed so I put plenty of plaster bandages around the sculpture so that it wouldn't crack when I released it.

 

 

The above image is of the mould with the gelatine material inside...I thought it looked like one of those optical illusions...is the face coming forwards or going backwards???

Am a geek what can I say!

 

 

I decided that because the White Walker is so detailed in colours/shading that it would be easier to paint up the piece first and add final touches when it was on.

I used Mistair FX airbrush paints to colour to piece and I tried to keep the colour palette to similar colours; blue. white and black.

I think I'll be investing in a new airbrush gun as mine is a basic IWATA but I think I need an up grade to one able to apply more detailed work. But am happy with what I did do.

As usual the airbrush application is always my go to for quick and easy application of the base colours; I then went in closer with a fine paint brush to add more detail work.

 

I also applied the crepe hair work before I applied the piece.

 

And there you have it....the final piece.
Its turned out pretty good and am happy with the overall look, as normal I can see areas that need work and development but that's a good thing cause that how I develop.

 

What do you guys think?

 

 
 Check out my facebook page for more images of the character...

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

Also check out the video on there....Video of the application (click here)

Next blog will be covering the Makeup Artist Expo in London which I'll be going to next weekend...eeeeeekkkkkk am very excited!!!

Bye for now lovelies...

xRx