The Succubus Photo Shoot - Part Two (possibly NSFW)

And now the rest of the photos from the Succubus shoot.

This looks like it should be a movie poster.

While it may look like partial nudity - there is in fact none. The idea was to create a character that it not only suited to be fairly undressed, but do it so it didn't feel like a juvenile attempt to see boobies - albeit red boobies with purple nipples made of foam latex.

Why make fake breasts? Why not? Not every model is comfortable showing off their breasts, so it shouldn't even be a question, nor should it be assumed so either. In this case I wanted to attempt something that while it looked surreal, also looked a little realistic to catch the viewer off guard a bit - since this is a fairly huge departure overall from what I normally do.

 And of course, as I mentioned in Part One, this was my last shoot with Julie - possibly forever, if not a long, long time - so I wanted to go as far as I could. My whole goal with all these photos is to show off Demons, there's that whole "don't judge a book by it's cover" idea - so even if a girl is bright red with horns and spikes all over her, doesn't mean she still isn't beautiful.

Okay, so it might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it does present an incredibly striking image that, I personally think, doesn't feel overly porn-y or sleazy.
 

The concept of creating a Succubus, a generally known bit of mythology, is that it sort of explains away the nudity, this would obviously be a creature more than comfortable with her sexuality and present herself in a totally relaxed way for a photo shoot - something neither myself or any model I've ever worked with would be truly comfortable doing. I shoot Demons, not porn - although I'm well aware some would label all this as such anyway.

I was worried it wouldn't all work out, that the whole thing wouldn't come together and might feel a little cheesy or cheap - but for me it worked brilliantly. I knew red would be a tricky colour, but it's a great character type colour. All blue, green, or purple would not have looked this striking for a shoot like this. The makeup all worked together fantastically, I was slightly worried the added horns on her arms and legs might not blend in, I think they work great and just add a little more depth to the whole thing.

Overall, I couldn't be happier with this shoot. It was a gamble, since there was so much time, money, and effort poured into this, that it might not work. The whole thing could have looked silly, or too ugly. I took several stabs at the design of that cowl piece, which ties the whole thing together and is really the centerpiece of it all, as far as I'm concerned, and I hope to use it in a couple future shoots if possible.

And yes, it looks like Darkness, Tim Curry's character from Legend. That was unintentional and as soon as I stood back and really looked at it with the camera, I realized it instantly - and really, that's not a terrible comparison at all. Darkness is still such a standout makeup/character that I'm glad I created something that could easily stand as a counterpoint to that if it had to.

So that's it. I think I've taken the overtly sexy Demon concept as far as I can. Some might pop up here and there, but way more PG, but I don't think I can ever top this - at least not any time soon.

The Succubus Photo Shoot - Part One.

I'm chopping this up into two posts because of how I'm editing the images.

One of my favorite Demon models is leaving PEI, we'd worked together - she was actually the first Demon shoot ever - for about 4-5 years and I thought we needed to do something big for one last shoot.

Since, Julie, the model in question here, liked doing the more pin-up type shoots and I not only had a mould of her face, but of her head and shoulders as well, I figured this was already half done. I was more comfortable doing larger paint jobs since discovering the Pro-Aiir paints - not perfect as they will come off with friction of any sort, but they do work really well.

I also want to point out, I don't do massive elaborate makeups because that's not my market. My market is the Halloween crowd, so I tailor my stuff to not feel too out of reach to that crowd - and I've no interest in being involved in the film special effects industry, too many uniformed people with far reaching unreasonably expectations that I just don't have the patience for. With the Halloween market there's much less expectation usually and a better sense of fun when it comes to makeup.

So this project was much larger scale that I'm used to. Not only was a planning a cowl and face piece, but several horns and spines and crap all over, but fake breasts as well. I was interested in the idea of artificial nudity and how it would read and be responded to - obviously a much more comfortable thing to deal with in general as well for both me and the model.

The idea was set and I have to get it all sculpted, I started with the face, it was easy enough and I don't really recall much by way of agonizing over the design. I did several of the horns and spikes at the same time since I wasn't worried about their overall look - other than they'd be black and sinewy looking.

The breasts were easy enough, I normally use Monster Makers clay, but I thought it'd be too difficult getting a smooth rounded shape - and then another matching one - so I used regular WED clay for that, sculpting the nipples separately since they needed more detail than I felt I could get with the WED clay. They were done with Monster Makers, the idea was to glue them on, seal them and paint them all as one - which worked perfectly.Took a couple tries to get them to turn out in foam latex though.

The biggest challenge, since I don't do larger pieces very often, was the cowl. I did a full face and cowl earlier this year with Julie and it worked out okay. I learned what was a good idea and why, and what was a bad idea and why. I like to learn by doing, not listening to someone else. I decide this time around to make separate pieces, cowl and face. And rather then have a full neck wrapping around - I left the larynx area open to make it easier to slip on - which worked great and was so easy this time around.

The worst part was the horns. I decided since it was open along the front to do do my seam along the middle of the face, not from side to side like it's usually done. I didn't put a lot of details along the top of the skull and back of the neck, so I figured it'd make for a quick decent seam - and it did, it worked great. The only weird angle I had was the horns.

While they turned out well in the mould, for some reason whenever I ran it in foam, they just wouldn't gel and tore apart upon demoulding. I tried it three times. First time was a regular batch of foam, it wasn't enough. Second time it was still crap. Third time the cowl came out okay, but the horns were still not gelling and I was running out time, foam and patience. I was filling orders for Halloween at the same time and it was impossible to juggle so I had to run this when I was running stuff for orders. In the end I chose to cut the ragged horns off of the otherwise decent cowl and ran the horns themselves, attaching them afterwards - they were still a little ragged, but they worked just the same so I was happy.

I think the mould still had some moisture in it and that was causing the issues, I just didn't have time to deal with that though since I was on an incredibly tight deadline.I was doing the shoot on Monday the 20th and this was Saturday afternoon, the 18th. I still had to paint all this stuff up and get orders ready for Monday morning as well.

So it all worked, I managed to get it all painted - I even learned a little bit more about my airbrushed and clogging issues that I had never realized before too.

We had an awesome location, there was no real rush - which was good considering I had to airbrush Julie from head to toe in red. We got the cowl, face and breasts on and began painting. I knew it was going to take awhile, and even though I lost track of time, I think it was around 4 hours. It was tiring and exhausting, but I think it was well worth it. In person the makeup was okay, there were definite flaws - but I know how red holds up on camera so I was banking in it helping fudge the colours exactly how I wanted it to. And I was right, it worked perfectly.

I had to do some cleaning up, the seams were far from perfect, but for the purposes of still photos it was good enough. I won't lie and say these are exactly how it looked right from the camera, they are processed. I cleaned up the edges were needed and decided to add a little extra black to her eyes. I used some big-assed black sclera lenses with a red iris and thought it needed to go a little further.

These are the first batch from post-processing. I wanted to make sure I had some "Facebook friendly" ones to post right away and these are those images. Even though there's no nudity, I'm pretty sure there's at least one idiot out there who wouldn't read, see foam latex nipples and get all upset. I'm not interesting in pushing those limits for the sake of rights or controversy, so this was my solution.

A huge amount of the photos not only turned out, but turned out brilliantly awesome. I couldn't be happier with the results of all that hard work. Dozens and dozens of hours of sculpting, moulding, casting and painting and applying all paid off in freaking awesome Succubus shoot.

It might be a couple days before I get around to posting the rest.