Saturday, February 14, 2009

Foamed Gelatin Prosthetics

Not a great idea.

I was hoping for a cheap foam latex substitute, something that didn't require a lot of work. I'd read about this foamed gelatin stuff that some guy, I think in Florida, had. I looked around at all the companies that supposedly carried this - not one of them did. Then I found a recipe for making the stuff myself.

It worked pretty good, really cheap, fast and easy to make. However it's basically crap. It's alright maybe for Halloween or something, but it's by no means a substitute for foam latex prosthetics for a movie. It's too rubbery, heavy and will not take the grease makeup I usually use. I could probably find another method of colouring the makeup, but I reckon whatever time and money I'd save not using foam latex would even out with an alternate makeup source.

I guess it depends on what you're using it for whether or not it'd be of any use. In my case, it's not of much use - other then testing my molds to make sure they will work. Which is useful for now, but who knows - with some testing and work I might find another use for it yet.

It was a good experiment - and while it won't replace the foam latex, it might be useful for something else.

If you're interested in trying it, it's just equal parts Liquid Glycerin, Powered Gelatin (not jello or flavoured stuff) and water. Mix it up, it'll be pretty thick, then heat it up in the microwave, about 20 seconds at first, trying again in 10 seconds bursts to make sure it's thinned out enough. You have to be careful not to get in on you, it's bascially like molten plastic and will not come off, it'll just burn and turn you into Freddy Kruger.

You can even colour it with some acrylic paint, or something similar I suppose. What use you'd have for it without a mold, I don't know really. And you can supposedly, I would assume while it's not too hot, apply it right to your skin - for whatever reason you feel you need to have a rubbery chunk of gelatin on your skin. If you do a search for "foamed gelatin" you'll find some other sites that go into more detail.

Other then that, not much else to report. I'm swamped with other projects again - hoping to clear my schedule enough to get back to work on Cronus and eventually Malice.

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