It's Over-Ambitious Cosplay Time! Post #2: Making a Mess...I Mean, a Mold

[pockysquirrel]

So I'm making a latex mask that I hope will be a passable replica of the "oh, they're meant to be aliens but we have no budget...let's put a rubber thing on her head!" bits that the Aquitians have. Spoiler alert: I have never worked with latex before, ever. So this should be interesting.

Per the handy tutorial I've been using as my guidebook, the process for making such a thing goes as follows:

1) Make a mold of your head.
2) Use the mold to make a clay bust of yourself.
3) Sculpt what your mask is going to look like onto said bust.
4) Put plaster all over your sculpture to make the mold your latex will go into.
5) Cast latex.
6) Profit!

Seems straightforward enough, right?

Well. We'll see.

First of all. If you're watching the tutorial, you see all those handy little warnings about how you're NOT supposed to put plaster on your face because it can be dangerous?

Yeah. Those were added AFTER I started working on this. Oops. But the good news is, my face hasn't melted off, and if for some reason this mold turns out to be a failure, I'll use paper mache for my second attempt.

A few differences I noticed between my effort and the guy in the video:

1) The "poor man's bald cap". Works well enough for that guy, but if you are a lady with long or longish hair, this technique will NOT WORK. The plastic wrap is very good at protecting your hair from the plaster. It is very bad at holding your hair in place. I ended up putting my hair in a ponytail, putting a wig cap over it, and putting the plastic wrap over THAT to keep the plaster out of everything. If you want to simplify your life, I'd suggest buying a swim cap and using that.

Exhibit A: A PockySquirrel preparing to get plastered.



Please forgive the face. This apparently is my "It's Saturday night and I'm shut up in my bathroom with my head covered in saran wrap and duct tape, WTF is my life" face.


2) THE MESS OH MY GOD. The guy in the video manages to make his mold without getting plaster anywhere but his head. This is a DIRTY, FILTHY LIE. Maybe he's using better quality plaster than me. Maybe he's just magical. I don't know. All I know is that when I was finished, there was plaster EVERYWHERE. It was on my sink, my floor, my hairdryer, you name it. In the interest of not ruining any clothing, I completed the entire process wearing an old sports bra. I consequently got bits of plaster down my cleavage. By the time I finally got the blasted thing off my face, my first thought was NEED SHOWER IMMEDIATELY. I then had to wash my face three times to get all the plaster particles and vaseline off.

But the saran wrap did its job, and I did NOT need to wash my hair. Hah!

3) The plaster took much longer to dry than I thought it would. It was probably still too wet when I took it off my head. It's still wet NOW, some 2 hours after the fact. Again, maybe video man is using better-quality plaster than me. IDK.

4) I needed more plaster than I thought I would, and I ran out. So consequently, I was only able to make the front half of what will eventually be a two-part mold. Yes, that means I have to do all of this AGAIN. And even the front half is going to need to have more layers added to it so it's sturdy enough to stand up to what happens next.


Exhibit B: The fruits of my labor.




Uhm...yay?

So yeah, that's my first day's worth of work on this costume. All told, I probably spent a little over an hour to do this part.

Comments

[punkpinkpower]

WOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*Cheers you* This is going to be so FUCKING AWESOME I CAN'T WAIT DO MORE HOLY SHIT POCKY YOU ROCKY.

[punkpinkpower]

.... *ROCK.

Or Rocky. Pocky you Rocky also works lol. :D

[pockysquirrel]

Hee, it works as both a rhyme and a Ranger reference.

[tsukino_akume]

Shut up, that face is adorable. I forgive nothing.

I hope the rest of your cosplay adventures are as entertaining a read as this was. Thanks for making my morning. ♥

[pockysquirrel]

Glad to have amused you so! I'm trying to take this whole process as lightly as possible because doing otherwise is liable to give me a nervous breakdown. And that much stress over an alien costume from a 20-year-old kids show is just not worth it. So yeah, expect the posts to remain humorous.

[angel_negra]

This is very oool. I'm looking forward to the rest of this. <3

[pockysquirrel]

Thanks. Hopefully it will be worth looking forward to, and not a train wreck.

[thesecondbatgirl]

Awesome!

[pockysquirrel]

LOL less than awesome, actually. Stay tuned for the next post for more info.