I attended the first of three classes by Alex Ortega in the making of your own mold on which to make a leather Commedia Del'Arte mask. The mold is of your own face! Freaky! But extremely interesting and a huge lot of fun!
The first part is to make a cardboard surround for your face so that the dentist's plastic do not drip on everything.
The subject lies ready to face the ordeal...!
The cold stuff hits your face and all goes dark - even through your closed eyelids. Two straws up the nose are your only breathing holes to the outside world and you have to lie with a totally still face for a few minutes while the plastics sets. You can hear all around you, but you cannot respond.
Alex was very good with a pre-arranged signal that would have the goo off your face in seconds if you felt uncomfortable!
While you lie there, motionless, a layer of plaster is applied over the dentist's plastic to support it - although it picks up the minutest detail of your skin, the plastic is not very tear resistant and is almost like very stif jello. From the time the first plastic hits your face to the time you can sit upright again, is probably only about 20 minutes. (The pink stuff smells very pleasantly of cinnamon and is not tooooo uncomfortable on your face.)
The first of the casts comes off and it is a negative copy of your face. This will be used to make a plaster copy of your face. Even the pores on your nose are shown on this material and on the plaster cast made of this.
This is the second casting - plaster into the flimsy pink negative - this will be the first copy of your face.
And this is what the copy of your face looks like!
Soon, more photos of myself suffering this indignancy and what my own mold looks like!
6 comments:
Wow! That is a very interesting face mask procedure! I've never heard of it before. . . And then, I suppose you could use it to mold a cased piece of leather, and it'd be the shape of your face. . .?
Very neat stuff there!
BTW, I do a little leathercrafting as well. Here's a link to my extremely neglected blog: I do not post very often at all; oh well :D
My blog
Please remove this from your sight. This is so completely the wrong way of doing a life cast. I am a 30 year veteran of creature, make fx and special costume building in LA. Very wrong technique and very dangerous. The person teaching this technique should stop and research on how it's actually done.
The person teaching the class had actually been to Italy to study the making of Comedia del Arte masks there........
And I stand by my previous comment. Completely wrong and dangerous.
Can you share with us the correct way of doing it?
https://www.stanwinstonschool.com/tutorials/how-to-life-cast-character-creation-tutorial
There you go. I didn't connect you to the link because I'm trying to sell you something. I did it because I know the people who did it and it is the accepted and correct way to do a proper life cast. We have been using this method in the fx make up industry for decades. I believe they are using a silicone life casting material in the video. But the technique would be the same for alginate. Like I mentioned a while back, I've been doing this professionally for over 30 years. The technique you were shown and are showing can be dangerous if done improperly or unsupervised. It will also give pour results due to the face distorting while lying down.
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