Tuesday, May 15, 2018
Wednesday, May 02, 2018
Star Trek Aliens
I don't recall exactly what prompted me to do this, but here it is.
It wasn't as much work as it might seem. I expected to be doing makeup for most of the day, but I think overall it only took about 2 and a half hours for everyone - admittedly it was rushed and I did a lot of "I can fix it in photoshop" over certain things. I'm not so anal about what I do that would never admit that I do rely on photoshop to fix things, mostly my laziness or my unwillingness to spend hours on a makeup for an hour long photo shoot.
I don't really care for the idea of doing group shoots, unless there's some perfect theme or idea that just lends itself to the idea. Mainly my issue is that it's almost always going to feel posed, in this case I relied heavily on that and just let that be the case. It had been a long morning and it felt like there was already so much going on that I wasn't allowing myself to just take it all in and do something a little more elaborate with the staging of the shots.
There's always the issue of how do you feature every makeup properly in every shot, and I was more fixated on that - in hindsight I have a few ideas that wouldn't have work with that in mind, but would've yielded some potentially really cool shots. Ah well, too late now.
Regardless of seeing the missed opportunities, I think it was well worth it. I'm happy with how it all turned out - really impressed that the Ferengi makeup worked as well as it did, I was expecting a bit of a trainwreck with it.
It wasn't as much work as it might seem. I expected to be doing makeup for most of the day, but I think overall it only took about 2 and a half hours for everyone - admittedly it was rushed and I did a lot of "I can fix it in photoshop" over certain things. I'm not so anal about what I do that would never admit that I do rely on photoshop to fix things, mostly my laziness or my unwillingness to spend hours on a makeup for an hour long photo shoot.
I don't really care for the idea of doing group shoots, unless there's some perfect theme or idea that just lends itself to the idea. Mainly my issue is that it's almost always going to feel posed, in this case I relied heavily on that and just let that be the case. It had been a long morning and it felt like there was already so much going on that I wasn't allowing myself to just take it all in and do something a little more elaborate with the staging of the shots.
There's always the issue of how do you feature every makeup properly in every shot, and I was more fixated on that - in hindsight I have a few ideas that wouldn't have work with that in mind, but would've yielded some potentially really cool shots. Ah well, too late now.
Regardless of seeing the missed opportunities, I think it was well worth it. I'm happy with how it all turned out - really impressed that the Ferengi makeup worked as well as it did, I was expecting a bit of a trainwreck with it.
Janta Nanxa Demon
This was a fairly experimental shoot.I mainly wanted to test several ideas and figured it was easiest to just try it all at once that way I'd only mess up one shoot rather than several.
First thing was to see if there was a way to speed up the body painting process. I don't do it too often mainly because it takes so long, so I had the idea of using a paint spraying with a much more powerful air compressor, still keeping it well within the safe range in terms of PSI though. I did it with a homemade Pax paint, which would have worked better had I not used cheap acrylic paint - it clogged up with lumps a couple times.
Overall it worked as well as I'd hoped. I only had a few spots where the paint tore off upon contact with other painted skin, mainly on the back of her legs in a couple spots and that could very well have been totally my fault not taking enough care overall.
Another test was using a latex cowl instead of a foam latex one. This was partially to speed up and make the creating process a little less costly. The cowl itself turned out pretty good, easy to pre-paint and worked great to apply all the hair to it. I then had the idea to blend it in on the neck with some simple foam latex blenders - this wasn't all that successful, it worked okay and I knew there might be issues, I was totally right about the issues. Not sure if I'll try this idea ever again, unless I come up with a different design that avoid the pitfalls of this attempt.
Another experiment was the blue scales. As much as I like using the airbrush and a stencil, it gets a little creatively stale after a fashion and the blue never really pops when painted over orange, so I figured, let's just do up several sheets of scales and glue them all on, one by one.
The scales where too thick, so it was hard to demould, only 1/3 turned out. I tinted the batch of foam, that made it much easier so I didn't have to paint each one. The large scales were really easy to apply, held up for the duration of the shoot, they took a long time to apply though. The smaller scales weren't so great to work with, but using only a few it's worth it.
Overall it turned out pretty well, it was a very long exhausting shoot but it worked. The orange looks great, not a faded dull colour (I did touch it up a bit, but not too much), the scales work really well. The 6 foot mohawk was a bit of a pain in the ass by time, but still worth the effort.
First thing was to see if there was a way to speed up the body painting process. I don't do it too often mainly because it takes so long, so I had the idea of using a paint spraying with a much more powerful air compressor, still keeping it well within the safe range in terms of PSI though. I did it with a homemade Pax paint, which would have worked better had I not used cheap acrylic paint - it clogged up with lumps a couple times.
Overall it worked as well as I'd hoped. I only had a few spots where the paint tore off upon contact with other painted skin, mainly on the back of her legs in a couple spots and that could very well have been totally my fault not taking enough care overall.
Another test was using a latex cowl instead of a foam latex one. This was partially to speed up and make the creating process a little less costly. The cowl itself turned out pretty good, easy to pre-paint and worked great to apply all the hair to it. I then had the idea to blend it in on the neck with some simple foam latex blenders - this wasn't all that successful, it worked okay and I knew there might be issues, I was totally right about the issues. Not sure if I'll try this idea ever again, unless I come up with a different design that avoid the pitfalls of this attempt.
Another experiment was the blue scales. As much as I like using the airbrush and a stencil, it gets a little creatively stale after a fashion and the blue never really pops when painted over orange, so I figured, let's just do up several sheets of scales and glue them all on, one by one.
The scales where too thick, so it was hard to demould, only 1/3 turned out. I tinted the batch of foam, that made it much easier so I didn't have to paint each one. The large scales were really easy to apply, held up for the duration of the shoot, they took a long time to apply though. The smaller scales weren't so great to work with, but using only a few it's worth it.
Overall it turned out pretty well, it was a very long exhausting shoot but it worked. The orange looks great, not a faded dull colour (I did touch it up a bit, but not too much), the scales work really well. The 6 foot mohawk was a bit of a pain in the ass by time, but still worth the effort.
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