The Seer

This shoot got put on hold for a couple weeks following some major temperature swings that caused my very steep driveway to become a sheet of ice that my poor truck was unable to navigate safely, effectively trapping me in my house for a while. We got it sanded (last time it rained nearly hours afterwards wasting the effort) and I got out and we finally managed to do it.

The makeup was quick to apply since it was all pre-painted, the eyes were just painted resin with gloss (and some red strands of yarn for a bloodshot look) that popped into holes in the foam latex perfectly - they didn't even need to be glued so I was able to alter the direction they were looking a couple times.

The idea with The Seer is that through a series of weird experiments attempting to imbue a human host with the powers of second sight (an ability naturally occurring in a couple Demonic species) a young woman is horribly disfigured, although she did gain psychic abilities - the ability to see death, not just hers or the people in her immediate surrounding, but a constant barrage of images of death from every living being on the planet.

This piece was one of the more fun (and perhaps challenging) pieces I've made in some time. Based off a bit of production artwork from the MMO The Secret World (now Secret World Legends), it seemed a pretty easy thing to copy without straying too far from the original concept.

I didn't obviously copy it exactly, the eye placement and size is different, but overall I wanted to stick close to it, since I really liked it. I don't recall seeing this character in game, so I had no idea what the other side of the face looked like - and knowing I couldn't leave Kayla (the model) blind, I created my own take on what it might look like allowing her at least one good eye.

Adding the eyes was what made it work so well. I've never been good at making realistic eyes, but I figured they would work given their surroundings. I already had half-sphere moulds the right size so I made a bunch of silicone copies and used them as eyeball placeholder - popping them out once I was ready to mould it.

I then made white resin blanks, painted an iris and pupil, using strands of red yarn and a thick gloss whipped up a pile of eyeballs that just popped into place once the whole thing was painted.

I had to glue little sticks on the backs of them while I painted to making it easier to handle them and give them a gloss coating, the sticks were just snapped off once I needed them.

Once we were done I decided to pop by a local Halloween store (open only on Fridays this time of year) and we did a bunch of random shots there.