Hello & welcome.
At this point in history, when every second show seems to have an alien in it, it's little wonder that the term "makeup effects" is nearly household. magazines and television have brought everyone the option of knowing "how it was done"... which means we constantly have to think up new stuff, new ways of fooling people (that's not a gripe; that's part of the fun). In the last few years, materials and techniques have come about that allow makeups that not only look real to camera, but to the eye as well. Eventually, I'd like to do sections focusing on some of these techniques, particularly the ones that are within the reach of both the amateur and the professional. For now, this page will primarily be a source of photos and information about individual projects... not necessarily a "How-to" so much as an overall story about the project. And since I am a true believer in credit where credit is due, I will be mentioning everyone who is involved in the featured project. And here comes the obligatory disclaimers:
-If I have missed your name with a project and you see it, e-mail me and I will put it on. Likewise, if you see your name and you don't want it there, e-mail me and I will take it off.
-All photos are from my own personal archives unless otherwise noted and are copyrighted. If you wish to use them elsewhere, please write me first.
-Any and all information given here is in good faith, and I take no responsibility for any injury or failure resulting in you trying out the methods listed within these pages or by correspondence.
-The opinions expressed in these pages are mine alone.
With that taken care of, on with the first installment, the creation of a severed arm for the feature "Deep Rising".
"Deep Rising" was one of the best learning experiences I've had to date, mainly due to Stephan Dupuis, the makeup effects department head. By the time I joined the crew, he had made a lifecast of the producer's arm and had sculpted a tattered stump and pruney fingertips. At this point, it was handed over to me. A two piece silicone mold with an ultracal jacket was fashioned and a two component plastic (EZ-plastic) was poured in and rotated until it set (initially, the arm was to float, though this changed and a more solid casting was created).
When it had cured and it was demolded, the arm had a fair bit of flashing... plastic that had seeped between the silicone halves which produced fin-like bits on either side of the arm. These were taken care of with a dremel tool (and lots of wet sanding!!), then the textures were meticulously sculpted back in with a series of needle-files and dental tools. Patching and upraised texture was done with Squadron White Putty broken down with MEK solvent (outside, using a respirator and gloves... this stuff is toxic!)
From here, the painting began. The paint job was done by breaking down and airbrushing acrylics (on hind-sight, I probably would have done better starting off with automotive primer then using thinned enamels, but oh well...), sealing them later with Testors Dullcoat (I love that stuff). Seven or eight layers were used to seal the paint from the chlorinated water (it was shot in a very large tank dressed up to look like a sunken galley).
At this point, I glued on strands of latex so there'd be gross, dangly bits on the stump waving about in the water. Charlie Grant did the hair work. Then we just zapped on a broken watch and a puppet rig (this was the sinking arm at this point... the floater was abandoned... the puppeteering rig was also aborted in favour of just dropping the arm onto the actor).
The Deep Rising makeup fx crew was: Stephan Dupuis, Dennis Pollack, Bill Terezakis, Rachael Griffen, Douglas Morrow, Charlie Grant, Giddeon Hayes and Brad Proctor. I apologize for any name misspelling, or if I forgot anyone.
UPDATE: OCT 18 1998
Hallowe'en is creeping up, and like many who are into this kinda strange stuff (and who aren't presently up to their ears in a film project) I've been running about like a lunatic on seasonal freelance projects, so there'll likely be some post-Hallowe'en photos coming soon.
In the meantime, I thought I'd throw out a project that I worked on for the ill-fated series "Sleepwalkers" (no relation to the feature). It had a lot of fun stuff, and it was too bad to see it go, but before it did I got a chance to use a technique for making gelatin corpses that I first tried out on the Millenium episode "Sacrement". This project requires negative molds of a human face and a medical skeleton, but an inexpensive model kit of a skull might suffice (I'm not sure about the styrene's heat tolerance, though).
The look I was going for was basically a sloughing of the skin, sagging and puckering. If you look in forensic books, you'll see how flesh actually folds more than actually wrinkling, and to capture that I decided to actually simulate the wasting-away process (it's a sick little job, isn't it?)
The project, incidently, is the same one you see me working on in the first photo above, the one titled "babysailor". It was a nightmare image of a child's corpse in a sailor suit. To start off, we had a mold of a child's face, in which a gelatin mixture was poured. We didn't need a super flexable formula, so it had a pretty high gelatin ratio to glycerin/sorbitol. After Pam was applied to the mold as release, a face was slushed by rocking the mold full of gelatin.
The first part of this technique is the trickiest... you have to de-mold the face while it is still warm, and flip it onto the skull quickly, getting it aligned with the nose and eye sockets. It may droop a bit... that's ok. It will form up to the skull in this state, and when cool, it can be glued with cyanoacrylate glue.
At this point, liquid latex which has been tinted with a base color is applied (3 layers) and allowed to dry (you can use a fan or hairdrier on cool). Then the fun starts.
Apply a heat gun on a low setting to the latex skin until the gelatin underneath begins to melt (don't burn the latex!!). When it does, you can push the latex skin about, forming sunken eyes, nose, etc. Hold the skin in the position you want until the gelatin cools (an ice pack will help speed it up). Continue until you get the effect you want. From that point, it's just paint, hair and dressing (I used Pax for most of it, doing final touches with a Kryolan RMGP pallet). As a finishing touch, I added my own technique for creating mould to a few areas (you can see some in the corner of the mouth).
The gooey, dark side of the face is good old cotton & latex, draped web-like over the skull. Personally, I still like the look of it for severely rotted flesh, particularly if using a very watery latex, such as the type manufactured for use on skin. It has a nice, fibery look like beef-jerky. As for gelatin, it's been making a comeback over the last several years and is still one of the most accessible materials for the beginner.
For the crew of both "Sleep Walkers" and "Millenium", see the blurb on the x-files somewhere below. I know these descriptions barely touch the surface... if any one is interested in a process, please e-mail me and I will gladly respond as soon as I can with the details.
One last photo for this installment... I've started to become very interested in designing makeups on the computer. While not a makeup, the next photo is based on another big facinations of mine, dinosaurs. Just thought I'd drop it in.
Update: Dec. 29 1998
Seasons greetings. I've noticed that there seems to be a rather large amount of dead things on this page... severed arms, corpses... I thought I might try to add something a bit different by tossing in an alien. Ok, it's a dead alien, but it's still a bit different (if this keeps up I'm just gonna call this "Brad's Dead Page").
This also gives me a chance to demonstrate what a huge group effort it is to create some of this stuff. For the most part I've delt with projects that I was more or less responsible for creating. This one was a panic job that we all pulled together on.
Though I cannot remember the episode, I think it was the season 4 ender of The X-Files. Hey... I just worked there... after a while all the shows become a blur.
We'd been sculpting and resculpting an alien since monday and no one could seem to tell us what the final look should be. Until Wednesday. Ok, that's cool. Except, they wanted five bodies by Friday. Ok, this was one of those "We Can't Do It" situations. But we sure as heck tried. The sculpt was finished wednesday and we started molding it. The first photo is of myself, Dave Coughtry and Roy McGregor prepping the sculpt.
Note those safety masks, folks. Now, since this alien, destined to be frozen in a block of ice, is about the size of a person, we absolutely did NOT want to make our molds out of plaster (200 lb molds aren't much fun). So, we made it out of fiberglass. The first layer is our skin coat, made of bondo autobody filler and resin, then mixed with catalyst. This is similar to using gelcoat, but since I've never used gelcoat, I don't know what the advantages of this method are.
We layered on different grades of glass cloth, laminating them down on the bondo with regular polyester resin. I seem to recall that this was one of our 9:00 am - 7:00 am days. Episodic tv can kill, but it's a steady paycheque.
Aluminum bars were used to reinforce the mold, and when it hardened, it was flipped over and the other half was made.
The final body was made of a translucent silicone, intrinsically colored, seamed and airbrushed by Audrey McAngus, Ian Biggs and Toby Lindala. We got our 5 aliens, it just took until monday. Doh!
Sorry... no photos of the finished alien yet, I'll put one on when I find one. The makeup fx crew of the X-files was: Mike Fields, Chris Wadell, Geoff Redknap, Leanne Rae Podavin, Roy McGregor, Audrey McAngus, Ian Biggs, Dave Coughtry, Vince Yoshida, Wayne Dang and Rachael Griffin, working for Toby Lindala.
UPDATE: FEBRUARY 26 1999 Slightly belated happy new-years greetings and all that.
I figured that it was about time I did a kinda-sorta step-by-step article on the main staple of makeup effects, which is the construction of a prosthetic makeup. This would have appear earlier if I had, in fact, taken any step-by-step photos, but until now I had none.
Well (trumpets) here it is. While prepping for a movie in Winnipeg I had time to do a practice piece that I've been meaning to do for a while, and my victim was Doug Morrow, with whom I've worked with on several projects such as Jumanji, Deep Rising, various X-files episodes, Disturbing Behaviour, et cetera. He was my first contact and friend in British Columbia and has also been an excellent teacher. My thanks go out to him, and in an effort to show my gratitude, I've decided to embarrass him by plastering his face on my page for the world to see.
But first, a brief description of what I have not shown here... the first step in creating a prosthetic. Normally, I would take an impression of the subject's face and neck. This is a process called "Lifecasting", in which the subject's face is covered in alginate (a dental impression material), which is then reinforced with gypsum bandages (medical grade). When this has set, some form of plaster is poured in and a replica of the person's features is produced in stone. This provides a sculpting base.
From here, the pictorial begins: Roma plastillina clay is sculpted into the "new" face.
The next step is to make a mold. There are three basic steps... the first is to mix up a nice, creamy consistency of stone (in this case, Ultracal-30) and apply it with a brush while blowing on it to reduce bubbles and get it into all the little nooks and crannies. This is referred to as a splash coat, a brush coat or a detail coat, depending on what mood you're in.
This, obviously, is far too thin on it's own, so to reinforce it, a new batch of stone is mixed up, and burlap is soaked into it. This is applied to the now hardened splash coat.
Technically you could stop here if the mold is thick enough, but I wanted a nice smooth surface and a base to set the mold
down on so it wouldn't rock about. So, step three is a "Finishing" coat, generally a thick, putty-like
consistency that can be applied with a spatula and buffed smooth as it dries.
As the stone sets up, it gets very hot (it usually produces steam) and then gets cold. When it's cold, you can open the mold carefully, and clean out all the plastiline clay with alcohol and a brush. See those holes in the lifemask (positive)? Those are called "vents". I'll explain them in a second...
OK, here's where the fun begins. This is me in my Sunday Best gleefully measuring out foam latex components.
Foam latex will come as a 3 or 4 part kit. This one is a 4 part... you have a latex base, a foaming agent (generally a fatty soap), a curing agent (sulphur based, lending foam it's attractive aroma) and a gelling agent that causes your whipped cream consistency foam to solidify into a squishy-mushroom consistency. When this is whipped up in a mixer, it's put into a large syringe and injected into the mold. Then the positive comes into play. It's set into the negative mold and the excess foam squeezes out, leaving just enough to fill the space that your clay sculpture had taken up. Remember those holes in the positive? That was to help get more foam out, relieving the pressure to allow the mold halves to close as tightly as possible. This helps you get thinner edges on your appliance, something which is necessary if you want it to blend in seamlessly with your subject's skin. After baking at 200 degrees for three and a half hours, the piece it removed. In the next shot, I've already applied the primary paint scheme.
The paint may look straight forward, but there's a trick to it. The overall color is actually built up in layers... first, an all-over base-coat, then tans, yellows and mauves are stippled on in a way remminicent of pointalism, and lightly blended. The paint is also unusual, an invention by Dick Smith (if you don't know who this man is, it's time to get out more and watch some movies like The Exorcist or Amadeus, for which he won an Oscar). It's a 50/50 mix of pros-aid adhesive and liquitex acrylic paint.
Obviously, Doug is just bubbling over with enthusiasm at having me glue a sofa to his face. Here he is with just the bald cap in place. The piece is carefully glued down with pros-aid 2, a slightly weaker formulation of pros-aid. painting is finished with rubber mask greasepaint, a castor-oil based makeup that won't adversly affect foam latex (regular greasepaint will break down rubber and turn chalky). Three hours of this later:
Voila.
Hope you enjoyed this one. As always, if you have any questions, e-mail me at the address below. Until next time, keep smiling.
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