The Drug Bust Scene is finally done!

It took long enough. 2 false starts - both days called on account of rain - but we finally got it shot today. If you've been reading this all along, you'll know about how difficult it's been to get things going on any of the 3 projects I've got on the go at the moment.

It was a bit of a late start to the day, but everything went really well, we got some awesome shots and I think ended up with a great little gun fight sequence. And right as we were getting the last shot the battery was about to die - we got the last shot with probably seconds to spare before it totally died on us.

Anyway, here's some pictures:

We shot for about 90 minutes, it was really rushed and a little crazed just making stuff up. We were able to do a lot more then planned since we changed locations from a public commercial salvage yard to a privately owned one. We had Draper running across the roof of some cars at one point.

The folks involved in the shoot were Graham Putnam as Gortch, Dylan Miller and Draper Bulger as the Drug Dealers, and Will Beckett and Tanya Nicole MacCullum as the Agents. They all did a great job.

I thought I'd upload a snippet from the final pat of the scene. WARNING: there's a shitload of screaming and cursing. This is a rough edit too, by the way.

It makes me laugh every time I watch it.

Finally got some shooting done.

I counted up since my first big cancellation of a shoot on June 25th, I've had to cancel 7 more since then - I might even be under estimating on that.

Last night I finally got to shoot something. It was a little scene, one of those scenes that involved more setup time then it did to actually shoot. Either way, it was nice to get something done.

Here's a still from the scene:

Afterward we took a few shots of Draper in makeup, I don't know if I'm really sold on any of these - since it was just an impromptu shoot, not something organized and thought out. I do like the last one though.

Prosthetics might go online for sale in the next two weeks

I think I'm at a place where I'm fairly confident in some if the pieces I've sculpted and have enough faith in my ability to reliably produce decent prosthetics to go online with them. I won't have a massive amount to start with, just a few pieces I think turned out really well and are unique enough too.

Just a few minor details to work out. I'll be using PayPal - unless I can find something better and easier for sorting out shipping costs. The little research I did on it and it looks pretty grim overall, hard to say what the best method for this is.

Also, I need to finalize my packaging. For now it'll have to be pretty simple, I just don't have the money or space for anything elaborate - although it'd be nice do something like the Rogue Planet prosthetics I've purchased. They're in a cardboard box with a clear plastic lid and an image of the piece with the name of it attached to the inside lower part of the lid. I kinda liked it.

Anyway, here's a couple pieces from the latest few batches.

Left to right: The Crazy Old Voodoo Lady from "Breath of the Dead", it's custom made piece, not generic so I don't see myself selling it online. Mr. Eliah from "Grayson & Gortch" will definitely be for sale, as well as Barbara from "Home Sweet Hell" and possibly even Doris Lutz from the same project - even though Doris is a custom piece, I think because it's just a forehead it should work well enough - I'll have to test that.

I did an impromptu photo shoot last week with the Gortch prosthetic on Graham Putnam when a shoot got canceled, I'd like to say that was one of my pieces - but it sort of isn't. The design was from a piece called BOARIS from the Scream Team but I remade it for my own use to cut down on the expense.

Here is a new piece, just finished this evening. The picture doesn't quite do it justice, but I still like it. I'll be using it in a photo shoot early next week and this one will also be online for sale. No idea what it's called yet since it's not for a character in a movie.

So here's hoping it all works out. I think I'll post them on the website, but I might test the waters through eBay at first too.

Balls...

Still trying not to be discouraged from all the recent major setbacks in shooting - it's only going so well.

Anyway, I thought I'd throw a couple photos of the recent prosthetic disasters up for you to see. This is actually the kind of info I wish I could have found online when I started doing all this a couple years ago. I've mentioned before that everyone says foam latex can go wrong a million different ways, but no one ever really explains it. So, I'm going to explain a few way to understand what went wrong with your foam latex.

This here is an unbaked piece. I didn't see any point since I knew it was no good. It was pretty difficult to pry the mold apart because the latex was still gelled as well as it could be, so it wasn't a solid, but a sort of solid.

And here's the result of finally pulling it out of the negative mold. I wish I could say I meant it to look like this, but it in no way resembles the original piece. And I wish I could say it was usable even like this, but it's garbage. Very freaky looking garbage, mind you - gives me some ideas actually.

Here's a closeup of a baked piece that didn't turn out. Normally the pieces should have a uniform consistency throughout, so what it looks like on the surface should be exactly what it looks like inside. This happened because only the outside skin of the piece gelled. Sort of like skin on pudding or something, but a little thicker. It gels from the outside in, not consistently.

When you bake a prosthetic that hasn't fulled gelled, the inside becomes a crumbly mess, the whole piece has no elasticity and rips very easily. How do you tell if it's fully gelled before baking? The best way is by seeing what's left in the bowl, or leave a blob sitting out. If you poke it and you can very obviously feel it's still squishy inside - it's not cured. You should be able to press it and have it feel like a uniform consistency all the way through. And remember, it takes a little longer for it to fully gel inside the mold.

From my experience, it doesn't really matter how long you leave the filled mold out either. No one every really explained that. I wasn't sure at first if there was a window of time from totally gelling that it had to be baked. I've left pieces out for a day or so before baking and it seemed to have turned out just as well as the ones from the same batch that were baked right away. So if you're not sure, just wait a bit longer before you throw it in the oven.

Most instructions will tell you all about adjusting for humidity and how it results in the ammonia in the latex being whipped off faster because the gelling agent is more active at higher temps. That's something you just have to work out on your own. Cut back on the gelling agent and cut back on the de-ammoniate time until it works - sounds fine, but be prepared to waste a lot of latex getting it right.

In my case I was dealing with 75% humidity - I had no idea where the safe range was for cutting back on either part of the run schedule. Took awhile, but I more or less sorted it out - still trying to fine tune it so I can accurately gauge it.

Anyway, that's it. This is an example of one way it can go wrong, and now you know what it actually looks like and what caused the problem. I've run into other problems over the past couple years, I'll probably run into them again. When I do, I'll make sure to document it.

The 4th Batch...

Over 24 hours of mixing up foam latex and baking and and still absolutely nothing to show for it. I just finished up the 4th batch and while it's still not perfect, it's getting closer. Funny that while all last year I was doing this without a thermometer or a hydrometer things were turning out fairly well - not always perfect, but at least usable.

So, "Home Sweet Hell" has been also postponed, my 3rd project this summer to get postponed because of shitty circumstances. I was hoping to pick it up again next week, but after a quick round of message from the actors it was apparent it wouldn't happen. In fact it won't be happening for at least 4 more weeks now.

I will point out I'm not annoyed with any actors - that's a stupid and pointless reaction under circumstances like this. If I were to get pissed at actor for having lives, I'd be a pretty huge asshole.

So now I just have to try to keep things moving as best as I can and see what happens over the next couple months.

At least it would appear that in this last batch of foam, I was able to fill the molds I needed for a photo shoot tomorrow.

Prosthetics Vs Humidity

In the process of making foam latex prosthetics, everything mentions how critical paying attention to the humidity is. I never realized just how much so until today.

I'm in the midst of making prosthetics for the "Home Sweet Hell" shoot tomorrow, the stuff just arrived this morning - a day late. Obviously time is something of an issue here. I finally got time to run a batch an hour or so ago, figured, it was a little humid I should cut way back on the gelling agent - the gelling agent is basically what it sounds like, it's the shit that makes the foam gel, and when it gels it goes from a meringue kind of texture to a solid, rubbery wet blob.

Complicated mathy/science stuff warning!

The instructions recommend at 50% humidity, 15 grams of the gelling agent. I find it gels too fast so I normally do about 10 grams. This normally gives me about 5-6 minutes to get the foam into the mold, add on another 2-3 to finishing mixing the foam and you've got around 9 minutes before it turns to crap.

Well, it was 75% humidity in here, I added about 6 grams and it gelled in about 2 minutes. I didn't even get it out of the mixer and just suddenly went from a perfect batch to a solid, ripped up, rubbery blob in about the span of  5 seconds.

I guess they weren't kidding about humidity being a critical factor. I just ran another batch, barely 1 gram of the gelling agent. It's been about 20 minutes and it's still gelling. I guess I'll see how it works this time eventually.

"Demons" by Karl Wenham

"Demons" unlike most of my other projects isn't a movie, but a collection of photos of various demons, beasts and creatures taken by a demon named Karl Wenham.

Karl himself is a demonic antiquities dealer, collecting weird, unusual  and sometimes dangerous artifacts from around the world, as well as from alternate dimensions. On the side Karl is a bit of a photographer and is assembling a collection of the various demons he's known throughout the years.

The basic idea is to create what normally would be a boring, mundane photo of a person doing nothing terribly special, just going about some normal routine and make it a little more fantastic by imagining a world where demons are as commonplace as humans.

The goal is to create at least 100 demons over the course of the next year, resulting in a potential art exhibit (or several) and a book containing all the photos along with a little info/story about how Karl knows these demons.

Here's a couple "outtakes" from today's photoshoot with Gortch.

So if you, or anyone you know, might be interested in volunteering to be part of the project - as a demon of course, get in touch with me at casting@themonkeyrodeo.com. Send along a recent photo (see the update below) and any info you want so I can get a feel for what I'm working with and what makeup might be right. No acting experience necessary, this isn't a movie - but you do need to comfortable being in front of a camera and capable of taking some direction in order to create a realistic looking, not posed, photo.

You might not hear back from me right away, but over the course of the next year I will be contacting potential demon candidates about arranging a makeup session and photoshoot. And I will point out right now, for anyone who just stumbled upon this without knowing me, that this is taking place on Prince Edward Island, Canada. If you're not going to be on the Island over the course of the next year, then there's not much point signing up - even though I do appreciate the interest.

UPDATE: So far the response has been a more then I expected in only a few hours- which is awesome of course, thanks to everyone who signed up. I should point out, if I actually know you, no need for a photo - that's just for folks I don't know. Also, should you have an idea or scenario for your alter demon ego, let me know as well.

Home Sweet Hell - The Monkey Rodeo Web Series

As the title says, "Home Sweet Hell"  will be the project's first web series. It's a last minute kind of project and has come together really quickly. It centers around an odd family, the Lutzs - Vernon Lutz, the human father, Doris Lutz, his demon wife and Ricky Lutz, their half breed son. Much like "The Addams Family" and "The Munsters" it's a bit of a monstrous take on the typical 60s family sitcom, such as "I Love Lucy" and "Leave it to Beaver" with a bit more of a darker sense of humour.

We film the "pilot" episodes of the sitcom this coming Saturday - barring any unforeseen circumstances. The pilot will simply be three 5 minute episodes, all one story to be released once a week. Hope to have them done relatively soon after the shoot.

Now if this all comes off as planned - we're doing this all in a one day shoot - then the plan is to further develop it into a full 12 episodes to be shot in January/February of next year. This is all depending on if we can actually do 3 episodes per day and the availability of everyone involved.

So that's it. That was the first official word about "Home Sweet Hell". We'll see how it goes come Saturday.

The Silicone Meincke Mask

First off, I'd like to show you some pictures, but I have a self imposed blackout when it comes to showing any images of the character until the movie has been shot - so you'll just have to imagine it.

I posted some images of the mold making a while back, check here, and I was pretty happy with how it turned out, a few little air bubbles (I've now learned  how to avoid most of them I think) and I was ready to go. I just needed some silicone.

This is the part I don't like. I've no clear understanding and I've never read this anywhere reliable - how you figure out how much silicone is supposed to be just enough. I saw a ratio somewhere once, but it didn't work. Luckily I made too much and it was almost just enough.

Another thing is that silicone isn't cheap - so if you screw up, it ain't cheap. I screwed up...it was expensive.

So the first thing, once I got the silicone in, was to prep the mold. I got some funky stretchy material to reinforce the silicone and laid it in around the openings. It's a little tricky since the material is nylon, it doesn't saturate well and does stick too well, you have embed it into the silicone on the positive mold. Takes some time to perfect, at least I hope that's the case.

Then I locked the mold shell together over the positive mold. I also had to make some air holes since I forgot when I was making the mold. Mixed up the silicone and began pouring, the type I use is made by Smooth-On and called EcoFlex 30. Shortly into pouring I realized the pour hole wasn't large enough and I wasn't going to get enough into the mold before the 45 minute pot life was up (for anyone unfamiliar with the term "pot life", it just means how long the silicone remains workable before it begins to cure).

I finished as much as I could, wasted a good chunk of silicone and ended up with a weird monster turtleneck looking thing. It was encouraging to see it would've worked really well otherwise though.

I redrilled the pour hole - worked much better. I thought I was done but found an area on the top backside of the skull had some air trapped in it. Luckily I was able to remove the mold from that area, drill a new hole, close the mold and keep going. Worked pretty well.

In the end it came out pretty damned good. The eye hole felt a little off on the mask, it was fixable with some trimming though and I'll know better for next time. It's pretty heavy and silicone doesn't breath so it gets pretty sweaty quick.

It worked though, worked really well for a first time experiment. I'm hoping once Breath of the Dead is shot to get these bad boys on line for sale. Normally you see them online selling for around $500 up to $1000, and now I understand totally why. I'm probably going to sell this a little on the cheaper side. We'll see.

They're coming to get you, Barbara!

Just did a very quick sculpt for a zombie prosthetic for Home Sweet Hell, first time I've done a normal, typical zombie prosthetic. Pretty happy with it.

I'm doing a lifecast of another actor for the same project in about 20 minutes. So far, for a last minute project, Home Sweet Hell is coming along remarkably well. Given how many problems my other projects have had, it's a welcome change.

Finger Food

I had asked the other folks involved in my latest project not to talk about it and I've been blathering on about it here and there - but I know what I want to let other's know about and what I want to keep quiet, so it's easy to just tell them not to talk about it.

So the official word is this: I'm doing a new project, a brand new, not mentioned before until the last post, project. As I mentioned last post, it's called Home Sweet Hell, it's a last minute sort of time filler project that's actually going to be really good considering it wasn't something planned and thought out months in advance.

There's a good amount of special effects and makeup work, all reasonably doable for a 1 day shoot. the cast is already assembled and ready to go, we're doing costume shopping over the next week or so. The script is two/thirds done and coming along way better then I'd hoped.

It was designed for a quick turn around, no CG, live sound, one location - very simple. There's a lot to be done before August 7th, but I'm pretty confident it'll all work out. And in the meantime I've even managed to get Grayson & Gortch back up and running.


So I'll leave you with this:

Yes, I'm giving you the finger.

With all the supplies I've had left over from the previous two project I'm able to throw together some decent little props as well. This silicone finger is one of three. Not perfect, but pretty cool nonetheless.

Lost in LaMancha all over again

Breath of the Dead is hitting wall after wall. Nothing that anyone is at fault for, just bad timing and bad circumstances. The latest of which is the lead actress breaking her leg - we're down for at least 8 weeks now. More production time means a better project hopefully.

Grayson & Gortch will hopefully resume soon, I just need to familiarize myself with it - part of my agenda for the day.

So, through a series of poorly timed events, I was left with a weekend available for filming with some actors, but nothing to film.  I feel like this summer so far has just been a wash out as far as accomplishing anything and I was getting a little tired of it - I don't say that to offend anyone who feels they might be responsible for causing any delays, these kinds of things just happen.

It goes without saying I think, that I want to shoot something - not literally, I mean film something. The problem being I've got nothing lined up, no script, no ideas - nothing. I knew the parameters this mystery project had, as well as a couple other birds I could kill with the same stone, so to speak, and that's what I had to work with.

I got together with my girlfriend (and production assistant, producer, etc.) and we brainstormed an idea. Took about an hour I think, but we ended up with a really great little idea for a new project. I don't want to reveal what it is, but it will be shot the weekend of August 7th and probably will be online within that week if all works as it seems like it should.

All I will say, is that it's called Home Sweet Hell and I think it'll be pretty awesome.

And now I've got a script to write.

Shell Shock Mold Aftermath

It took nearly 16 hours - that's with waiting time and whatnot, not full work - and the mold is finally done.

I managed to pry the back off first. It came out pretty clean too.

The front half was a different matter.

Mu biggest concern was that the mold would be riddled with little air bubbles like the mold for the glove was, and there are some, nothing to be concerned about however. I can probably even patch most of them up once it's all cleaned out.

So now all that's left is to get the silicone - and put in the pour holes, which I forgot to do when I made the mold - and if all goes well, I'll have my first silicone mask and if it holds up, it'll eventually be available for sale online.

Shell Shock Mold

No pictures this time around because I'm keeping this under wraps until we shoot, but I will say this:

No  matter how much research you do, there's always that point in a project that involves something you've never done before, that you just have to do it, get it over with and hope for the best. You either did it right or you did it wrong, you can wait and wait but that won't change, it's either right or wrong.

I sort of hate this Shell Shock material. It's awesome when it works, a little tricky to work with - and that's what makes it hateful. It cures so fast, there's 2 versions, fast (3 mins) and slow (8 mins) and as soon as it's mixed it starts to thicken to a warm peanut butter consistency. It's thick and stringy and you just hope to hell to managed to get enough on your sculpt to make it worth the effort.

It's a mold making material, by the way. A great one, as I said before, when it works. There's no shrinkage or distortions like can happen with other mold materials after they've sat on a shelf for awhile. Once it's cured it's a hard urethane and pretty much nothing sticks to it that you'd be casting into it - at least not that I've encountered so far.

I'm using it to make a mold for a silicone mask. I've used it to make a glove with 90% perfect results. This is for something much bigger and much more costly should it all go pear shaped.

The first coat is curing now, I've got to put another one on in a few minutes and then a backing support material. I'm dreading the end of the day when it's all done and I have to pry this thing apart - I can already see all those shitty little air bubbles in there ruining it. However, since it's a hard shell mold, there's the possibility of reconstructing part in a hard clay should there be any air bubbles - so all isn't entirely lost or wasted.

I guess we'll see in about 6-7 hours when it's all done.

Painted Silicone Deformed Voodoo Zombie Hand Glove

So there it is. I'll be the first to admit it far from perfect, but the whole point of this was that the silicone glove was meant to test the way towards doing the fill head mask. Every time I look at this thing I wish I'd had the material at the time to do a full forearm glove - but I didn't, so it's not, so whatever.

This is the final painted version, by the way. This is way first time attempting to paint with silicone paints, it's not great, but it'll more then work well enough for the movie. Painting with silicone is a weird experience in a way, it's much different from conventional paints - at least at this point in my experience it is.

I won't go on too much about it, since I'm very much an amateur at this sort of thing, so anything I say, or write, would just be speculation based on 20 minute work rather then years of experience.

Anyway, I'm happy with it. The FX for this movie are coming along slowly...very slowly. Mainly due to financial constraints. I don't mind the slower pace though, it gives me more time to suss out what I'm doing and if I'm in fact doing it right.

Because of this pace, I saved myself from a very costly, in both time and money, mistake. I've worked with silicone mainly as a molding material - not as a casting material. The basic difference being you can use it to make a mold or you can use it to create the object in the mold. Now I've read a lot of material about using silicone but never at the time did I need this information for an FX piece, so I wasn't never able to put this information into practice in a sense where I'd remember it.

In doing the silicone mask that will accompany this glove, I debated about the mold material - mainly because of cost. I was going to do it with the same material I used on the glove, Shell Shock, but I wasn't thrilled with the way it turned out. I later realized because I did it wrong, makes sense now. I decided on silicone, because I'm more familiar with it, but neglected at the time to remember some very important.

There's 2 types of silicone, platinum cure and tin cure. And to be very basic about it, platinum will cure in the presence of already cured platinum and tin in the presence of cured tin - but you can't mix the two. It's a bit like "crossing the streams", to quote Egon Spengler. Although there's no potential for death, it's just a massive messy waste of time and money. In my case, my mold was tin cure, my casting silicone was platinum cure - or would have been had I not realized it and turned out with a crappy pile of uncured silicone in my mold which is a massive pain in the ass to clean up.

I've heard some folks say there's no problem if it coated properly and blah, blah, blah, but I'm not interested in experimenting with such expensive materials at the moment.

So that's it for my silicone ranting. Now, can you guess what movie I was watching when I painted the glove?

Crazy Old Voodoo Lady

I finally got around to sculpting the prosthetic for a "crazy old voodoo lady" from Breath of the Dead. It's not perfect, it's my first time attempting realistic looking old age makeup - I've seen way worse in way bigger budget movies.

In other news, I've got a couple new projects in development and made some changes to some current projects. I'm hoping to apply for a grant for The Brotherhood movie to be shot next summer, it'll allow me to make it look a little better then I'd planned.

As well, I've started a new project that's not a movie, but still heavily relies on the prosthetics and masks - actually without them there is no project. It'll done over the course of the next year to be finished by June 30th of 2011. It's going to be a book of demons, at least 100 of them, more if I can swing it.

The idea is a book of photos of demons in their everyday lives, most of the photos will look candid as we see regular old blue collar demons at work, or a couple old demons drinking at at bar and each will have it's own little story. It'll be done as though the photographer himself is a demon, a demon named Karl Wendham, and these are all the demons he knows.

So this is the first I'll be saying that the Karl movie won't be happening. It was supposed to be a mockumentary about Karl, but I just couldn't get a good idea I was happy with. So instead that project has been split into two projects. One being the book and the second I'm not ready to announce, it'll probably be ready in December, maybe earlier though.

I think that's about it for now. I've been slowly working away on getting things ready for Breath of the Dead and I'll probably start up on Grayson and Gortch again pretty soon if I can as well.

Fake Hatchet

Just like the title says, it's a fake hatchet. It's a prop for Breath of the Dead and more then likely the item in the online shop. Hopefully it'll be available soon - as soon as I perfect my hand painted wood grain technique. It's made in 2 parts, the handle and the head - the foam is tinted so it has as close as possible to the proper base colour.

Be sure to check out The Monkey Rodeo website, you might find it there by late July.

Finally...

Another one over and done and DVDed. It should've been done weeks ago but the company I ordered the 3D glasses from were pretty poor about communication. It was taking forever for them to arrive, so I sent an email, asking how it was shipped and if there was a tracking number, no response. Sent a couple more and eventually someone responded, acknowledge the shipment was probably lost if it still hadn't shown up and FedExed me another shipment.

So the DVDs are all done. I'll mention this now in case anyone's curious, they're not for sale unfortunately. Not at this point in time. These were made specifically for the people involved in the movie. So why am I posting this since they not for sale? Because I wanted to.

At some point in the future, the very far future, they will be for sale. I might even make them available for download from the site, for a very small dollar amount - once I figure out if that's possible or not.

Awesome stuff

I got more supplies today. I hope to get the Flex FoamIt hatchet made this weekend. The mold of the handle is done I hope to get to the hatchet head itself today and it should be ready to go and be all ready for hacking people up on Sunday. I hope - god knows how busy I'll be otherwise.

The "otherwise" just happens to be the sculpt of what will soon be the Randall Meincke silicone mask. If you're wondering who the hell is Randall Meincke, that's the name of the deformed kid who is raised from the dead in Breath of the Dead. And so far, I'm pretty impressed with how he's coming along. I'd love to show you, but I've forced myself to put a bit of ban on any images of him until the movie is completed.

The actors won't even get to see him until the first shot he appears in the movie, and even then they won't know exactly when he's coming or where he's coming from. There won't be any images of him from the shoot being posted either - until after the movie is released.

If all goes as planned the movie should be available pretty quickly. We're doing live sound, all live special effects - as little post work as possible. No CG or anything of the like, the most I'll be doing in post is colour correcting and enhancing the sound effects and the music. So this could be ready before Halloween, which seems like good timing.

That's it for now, I'm about to try casting the foam hatchet handle.

Postponed Dead

It was a pretty quick decision to make, but we've postpone shooting Breath of the Dead until Late July/early August - the problems ranged from casting and actor availability, time and money and other things.

Can't say I'm upset about it, as soon as I was told that 2 of our last minute replacement actors were unavailable I actually was relieved because the choice was made for me. There was simply no way we could pull all this off in two weeks. So now I'm looking at 5-7 weeks - much easier.

In some good news, I got the mold done for the hatchet handle. I'll be doing a hatchet and sledgehammer, the heads and handles will be done separately. And the mold turned out pretty damned good, I guess we'll see when I get the material to cast it this week.

So that's it, nothing major things will go back to being quiet again for the time being.

Silicone Hand

I went back and forth on whether or not this was going to work at nearly every stage of doing it.

A little background, in case you've no idea what's going on here. The killer in the movie is a deformed person, resurrected from the grave through evil voodoo. Pretty simple. to create his look I was going to originally go with the old foam latex standby. I eventually, and very recently, decided to try my hand at creating it with silicone instead.

The main reason was to make it look better and cut down on the lengthy makeup application time. Time which we won't have while shooting.

The makeup, or whatever you want to call it, was going to consist of several small pieces for the head and a glove. It's now just a glove and a mask, a full head mask rather then the small pieces - which will look so much better.

Now, I've no idea how these silicone pieces are made. I saw some images, very vague images here and there and eventually felt confident enough to give it a try. I figured the glove would be easiest way to start.

Here's the original sculpt. It was done over an UltraCal cast of the actor's hand. I wish now I'd had made it much longer to go all the way down past his wrist, but this was meant to be a foam latex prosthetic at first.

I'm not that great yet at making 2 sides molds like this.

I used a material called Shell Shock to create the 1st part of the mold, backing it with another material called Plasti-Paste. I also learned the hard way that I didn't seal the clay properly and clearing it all from the Shell Shock mold was an absolute nightmare.

After many, many hours of scraping and cleaning I got all the clay from the mold. A lesson well learned, I now know how to properly seal it. You can't see here, but the Shell Shock was really thick and cured really fast so there were a lot of air bubbles in the mold. Not that I'm worried. It's a zombie hand, it's not supposed to look pretty.

And here it is all ready to go. I made up way  more silicone then I actually needed. Kind of a pain in the ass, but ah well, again - lesson learned. I've still to figure out how I'm supposed to gauge this sort of thing.

It was a bugger to pull from 2nd half of the mold off too. At this point I really noticed how thin some parts of the sculpt were. I thought I'd corrected it but I didn't do a good enough just. I can still reinforce it a bit though, it'll just be messy - as if this wasn't messy enough.

And here it is, about 10 minute out of the mold. You can see how a long sleeve on the glove would've been nicer, but again - lesson learned.

A quick test on camera about 10 minutes after pulling it from the mold.

And this is the only glimpse you'll see of the character of Randall Meincke, the deformed voodoo zombie killer until you see the movie. I have 2 weeks before we shoot and about 2 months worth of work to things ready for it - at least this here was some major encouragement that I made the right choice instead of makeup.

Grayson & Gortch Update

I guess it's a bit of an overall update really. In any case, I believe I might've mentioned that I've postponed Grayson & Gortch until mid-July, maybe even later depending. Things are sort of all colliding right now, project-wise. I'm trying to wrap up Cronus, get things ready for Breath of the Dead and I've got a bunch of little projects I'm either helping out on, volunteering on, etc. and it's all getting to be a bit much. This should lighten up a bit after this week, but it doesn't help balance out my financial situation. Seems the poorer I am the busier I get.

I'm hoping to get a few items ready and have the online store up and running come July as well. This should help things if I find some decent ways of promoting it. I might even use eBay at first. I don't know yet. I've got enough to think about that's happening right now anyway.

Anyway, the good thing that's hopefully coming out of all the chaos  is the possibility that the silicone mask idea will work out. If it does that's a huge jump in what I expected I'd be able to do this summer and it makes things a little more versatile and efficient for other projects.

While I love the hell out of doing prosthetics, they are limited in a lot of ways. Silicone masks will allow be to do background characters, or extras, without the worry about making sure I'll have time to do the makeup before the shoot. That's a huge bonus. Another thing is that they encompass the whole head, while a prosthetic (that I'm able to do now without a huge oven) are just face pieces, so there's concern about the actors basic face shape and hair - this isn't a problem anymore.

Now what all this means for Grayson & Gortch, as the title implied, I've had time to look at the script and see where I can make changes that will save me time and money. This happened a lot with Malice. One scene that was pretty boring and would've cost me a rental fee was bothering me. It's a crucial scene, where the two main characters are introduced. I was always a little annoyed with it's simplicity. Not any more.

Originally it was two pages in an office-ish type setting. Now it's a raid on a drugged out vampire den who are holding human hostages. That might seem like it's more work and more money, but it's not. The actors are mainly the same, some roles are just adjusted slightly. And it's much more of a cool little scary action scene.

Where the silicone masks come in are the vampires. I don't want to do traditional Buffy style vampires, these are a little more feral looking - they are junkies after all. So I just make one mold, do a couple different paint jobs, a couple costume changes, and I can turn 3 or 4 actors into almost 10 or more vampires.

I'm even contemplating making foam stakes and I'll get to use some crossbow props I was given last year. Should be pretty cool. I just need an old house or barn now.