Demon Punk.

I wasn't expecting to love this shoot as much as I did. I liked the idea and overall it seemed like it was going to be a decent shoot, but once I finished up the makeup I absolutely loved the look of the character - it's very simple looking overall, but there's a really nice movie quality to it. Maybe that was me, maybe it was my model - probably a combination of both. Robin did a great job with it.

I used, once again, the generic cowl piece I made some time ago - I have several more shoots planned with it and even several more ideas to modify it, so I'll definitely be using it for more shoots as often as possible until the mould degrades too much.

The original design had a series of long spikes to represent a mohawk. Something about it wasn't exactly working for me and I'd just watched Pacific Rim again and thought a single, blade-like fin might be kind of cool. So it was very Kaiju inspired. I was a little worried it might not work since it was a pretty finicky 3 part mould - but it turned out just fine.

I think the other element that totally made it work was the fake tattoos. I had always planned on painting one on the side of her head - but I had forgotten I had a couple Tinsely Transfer tattoos lying around and it just happened to be this jailhouse looking scorpion tattoo - so that went right on her neck. With it was an RIP tattoo - Robin suggestion it should go on her right cheek, and it turned out to have been a perfect choice.

We didn't have a location in mind, normally when I do urban shots I use Charlottetown, since I'm familiar with it, but I was getting bored with it and decided to head to another nearby town for this shoot. I'm not as familiar with it, so we sort of just  drove about and found places.

I was a little worried I might not ever get that one great shot - but I ended up with several. Seems lately the shoots have been going that way - which is awesome. Nothing worse than spending time and money on a shoot and it's just so-so. Robin found a perfect fitting leather jacket on her own and the boots really sold it, she bought those at at used clothing store and had already painted them up for a Harley Quinn cosplay she's doing, they worked great for this, either way.

It was a great shoot. I'm really happy with it. I still love the look of the big fin type thing, I think it works really well as a mohawk alternative. My next shoot with Robin, hopefully this weekend if the weather holds is going to be pretty awesome, we're doing a Demon TankGirl.

Post Apocalypse Demon

This is one of those shoots that I could have worked on the costume for years, but time and money and all that I decided to keep it simple - rather than a Mad Max style style look, or even Fallout, but more basic like Book of Eli (not that I liked the movie that much, it's just a nice simple post-apocalyptic type setting).

My friend had a motorcycle and we figured we use that as a bit of a prop, loaded it up with bags and weapons.

I had planned to photoshop in a new background to make it look a little more bleak, but I have so much on the go right now I felt they worked as is. I might do something later down the road when I have more free time though.

CoralWraith Demon

Did this shoot the other day with a new Limited run prosthetic, the CoralWraith Demon.

CoralWraith Demons are the most unusual of all the Demonic species. They are roughly only 5000 years old, also making them the youngest species as well.

It's believed that around 5000 years ago, a small tribe of Baalmoor set out from the coast of Peru in search of a new home, a storm capsized their boat, crashing them upon a coral reef. In a near unbelievable coincidence, contained within the coral happened to be an ancient species of fungus - similar to the modern day "zombie ant fungus", a fungus controls the brains of its host. While normally these fungus are unable to effect any control over larger creatures, infecting only small aquatic insects, due to the unusual brain chemistry of the Baalmoor, the Demons became infected with the ancient fungal spores.

Only a couple dozen Baalmoor allegedly survived the wreck and washed ashore some time later, the fungus having partially bonded with the brains of the Demons. Their facial structure erupted in a boney mass, making them indistinguishable as once having been Baalmoor. And since the tribe lived quite isolated, this new deviation from their species became a totally new one. Keeping many of the same traits as the Baalmoor, the CoralWraith live considerably longer and even much harsher climates.

The prosthetic itself has limited vision, which adds to it's kind of creepy appearance.

The CoralWraith prosthetic is part of the Limited Run line, it includes 8 resin spikes as well. While it was sculpted on a form suited for an adult male, because the chin is removed from the rest of the face, it fit quite well on a female face as well.

CoralWraith Prosthetic - $55 (CAD) plus shipping to anywhere in the world, email themonkeyrodeo @ gmail.com to order. There is a limited quantity available, as of July 23rd, 2015, so depending on when you're reading this, it might not be available anymore.

Kaeliss Demon

I took a quick trip to Nova Scotia to pick up some supplies and planned to do a series of photo shoots along the way. It turned out to be a little more difficult than planned and I only ended up doing one shoot, but I got to location scout the other planned ones for later dates. Otherwise it ended up being a decently fun shoot to do, it's been awhile since I wandered around Halifax.

Grünhaut Demon

A while ago I decided to create a blank cowl piece for a series of shoots. I had done fully sculpted cowl pieces before and quickly realized their limitations - if you have the money and time it's not a problem, but when it's really just a hobby all those massive moulds and time sculpting several different large pieces just isn't a wise idea.

So I made the simplest thing I could think of, it's actually not even really a cowl, it doesn't cover the neck - which unless there's a major reason to do, it just limits the model's movements. This just covers the head and ears, down the back of the neck a bit and doesn't limit movement.

The idea is that I can add to it instead of creating a whole new piece, so with a different brow or full face piece, the addition of a few horns or something else - I get a whole new, fairly dramatic makeup for a fraction of the effort. And I'll see by the end of all the shoots just how well it works and might offer up a few of these for sale, keeping in mind, they're not perfect, but they're decently effective and easy to use if you have some skill with makeup and hate working with real bald caps.

This makeup was actually intended for a bit of a publicity thing, but it never happened for some reason so I went ahead with the shoot for myself anyway. The makeup took a little longer than expected, but I wasn't rushing and kind of took my time working it out.

I was particularly impressed by the body paint I used for this, first time using Graftobian's ProPaint and I really liked it. I don't say that because I'm being sponsored by them or anything - because I actually will also say I don't like their airbrush makeup - but the ProPaint stuff is awesome. While overall it's probably pretty similar to other body paints (I've only used a handful of other brands) one thing I really liked is it was unscented. Some are overwhelmingly scented and some are just really oddly scented, this stuff...nothing. I appreciate that and I think most people being covered in it appreciate it too.

The main reason I like it being unscented is that sometimes you wonder what the scent is covering up. There's no reason to make body paint smell like something "pleasant" unless you're covering up something unpleasant. It kind of feel like they've nothing to hide and leaving it unscented proves that.

I mention it because sometimes to cut corners when I'm turning altering someone's natural skin colour so dramatically, I'll just photoshop it later. This time around, I actually was very quickly able to colour her hands to match. And with a barrier spay, there was no transference of the colour at all onto her clothes - although the palms of her hands wore a little because of the heat we were working in.

I threw in this last picture because the model, Katie-Rose, had brought this weird doily looking poncho she'd found - and of course had to buy - she threw it on after the shoot and surprisingly it's not as god awful as it seemed. Still seems weird though, but I almost want to come up with a shoot now specifically using that piece.