New prosthetics online

The newest featured prosthetic is Cthulhu, $130 available by special order only.

Or, if you'd rather some ears.

Fae Ears - $22.

Grishloch Ears - $22.

Or perhaps you just feel a little horny...There is honestly no "horny" joke to be made I haven't heard while applying these.

Demon Spikes - $25

 Large Spikes - $30.

Horn Cluster - $14

And finally, the newest Limited Run piece:

Grishloch Demon - $55.

 

Cthulhu Prosthetic

I finally got this bad boy finished and ready for sale, the Cthulhu Foam Latex Prosthetic Appliance, and the first in a series of what I'm calling "The Innsmouth Collection", all Lovecraft inspired pieces.

Now, this is not something I'd really recommend for beginners, it does require a little preparation work - unlike any other of my prosthetics. And, like all my other prosthetics, it comes unpainted - so be prepared for a paint job to make it work.

And the vision is limited, I wanted to make a piece that totally disregarded human features in order to make it more Cthulhu-like, so the vision comes from the small dark "spots" on the brow. While it is limited, it's not that bad depending on what you want to do with it - operating heavy machinery as Cthulhu is not recommended.

These "spots" need to be cleaned up on each piece - special instructions will be included. As well as a small area that will allow you to breath through your nose will need to be cut out - your choice though, but the area is totally hidden under the tentacles.

The piece is available for $130, which is admittedly much more expensive than my usual pieces, however this piece requires nearly 5-6 times more foam than a regular face piece and a bit more work than the typical prosthetic as well. I will point out, because it's a much thicker piece, the thinnest point is along the forehead - which is the only area you need worry about really blending - this piece is much more likely to be reusable than any other piece I make, information on that will be included in the special instruction as well.

For right now it comes with 4 tentacles as well, each are about 5 inches long, although I do have plans for much longer ones in the near future, so you'll be able to pick what size and style of tentacle you want - at least that's the plan, don't hold me to that.

The Cthulhu Prosthetic is available ONLY as special order, I don't plan on keeping them in stock, only making them as they're ordered. Allow up to two weeks for manufacturing, so if you're in a rush, you might be out of luck. And as far as wholesale goes, I will take orders for it - however, there is a limit per order (nor sure just yet, but no more than 5 per order mostly likely) and they'll be $80 each.

Occasionally rejects will be available as well since this piece does have a much higher rate of defects, most of which can be easily patch and are unnoticeable, but sometimes there's just too much or too great of a defect.

And that's pretty much it. Any questions, you can email me at foxhenderson @ themonkeyrodeo.com

What Happens to Old Prosthetic Makeup?

I've had these lurking around my workshop for some time and thought it'd be interesting to see a side by side comparison of a prosthetic stored properly and one stored very improperly.

The white-ish one was obviously stored properly, the one that looks like overbaked bread was not. These were both made around the same time, give or take a couple weeks, approximately 3 and a half years ago.

The one on the left is still totally usable, the foam is slightly stiffer (but then again it could have come out like that in the beginning, I don't recall) but otherwise totally useable - in fact I'm planning on using it tomorrow perhaps. It was stored in a sealed bag away from direct light.

The one on the right was left in the back seat window of a car, during the summer, for maybe 7 months or so and has just been left out ever since. It's incredibly delicate, in fact a few tiny pieces crumbled away just picking it up to do this shot. It's totally stiff, the underside (not in the sun) is a yellow-ish colour and you can see the topside is that golden brown (slightly burned) bread crust colour - although totally rigid and a little shiny.

This is a good demonstration to customers who by prosthetics who wonder why things need to be stored properly and how long they can last. In a sealed bag (everything prosthetic piece I sell comes in a zip lock bag anyway) out of direct sunlight - and definitely not in the back window of a car for several month during the summer.

As I said, it's been about 3 and a half years and the piece is still totally useable. You hear some people go on about how foam latex (and latex in general) will degrade over time, it will, but it will take a LONG time, so there should never be any concern about buying a prosthetic piece like this and no using it right away - just store it properly and you can still use it years later.

The Witch's Jawbone prop finally for sale.

I started working on these awhile back and things just got really busy with the Halloween season so I had to put it aside, but it's finally done and ready for sale. It's a limited run of 5 for sale, although there's 1 prototype with resin nails that was given to a friend, and two more - one of which I'll be keeping for myself and the second will be held until I decide what I want to use it for, a prize for a contest or something. I don't know yet.

It's a full sized jawbone, moulded and cast in clay from a medical skeleton jawbone, I resculpted the clay jawbone to incorporate the nails and give a more distressed look. The clay jawbone was moulded for the final pieces, which were cast in resin, all hand painted and finally real antique steel nails were driven into it (there were hole already, but the nails are pretty firmly held in place)

The box is wood and glass (I didn't make it, it was purchased), I stained it myself though. The jaw rests inside on a bed of packing moss, with a Certificate of Authenticity underneath it, stating the number of the limited run each particular piece is.

 I haven't sorted out shipping costs yet, I'm planing on making them available for shipping by November 25th, I estimate $30 for US and Canadian orders, overseas will be pretty expensive I would imagine. Each one will have the jawbone wrapped in bubblewrap inside the display case, to prevent the nails from possibly cracking the glass in shipping. And the case itself will be padded and the package marked fragile. I also recommend a shipping method with insurance - it doesn't cost extra, but those methods are slightly more expensive in general.

And as for the cost on this piece, supposing you made it this far and you're still interested, is $75. To order, send me an email at themoneyrodeo@gmail.com, include your address so I can get you a shipping quote as quickly as possible, I will then send you an invoice through Paypal, or through email if you're in Canada and would rather use Email Interact.

And that's it. I'll be posting these on the website later this week as well as on Etsy.

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.

Suicide Demon Girl at the Beach

I'm not a beach person at all, but somehow I ended up doing two beach shoots one after the other. These ones turned out a little better than the last beach shoot, we had a little more cloud cover so the shadows weren't as harsh - no, I'm not a "professional photographer" so I don't have all the light bouncing shit and flashes and whatnot.

The makeup itself was pretty simple, just a face piece and a pair of ears, along with some yellow and orange strips and fake tattoos. The wig looked nothing like the one I'd ordered, it looked a little like crap while it sat on the headform as well, but for some reason, once Julie put it on it sort of took on a whole new shape and ended up looking like an overdone, campy 70s hairdo - which looked awesome for what we were shooting.

That's pretty much it for me being at the beach this summer, I have one more I'm hoping to do, but it's not so much on a beach as it is a small desert looking island.

Witch's Jawbone

This is one of those props I wanted to make as soon as I heard about it. I recall hearing about it a long time ago, before I made props and it just never resurfaced as an prop idea before until recently.

What makes this piece a little more creepy or weird than say a random Cthulhu statue, is that this is a real thing. It's something you could actually find - perhaps it wouldn't look exactly like this though.

The story behind it is that back when people used to hunt witches and do all manner of ridiculous, superstitious things, when a witch was killed - presumably when there was still a corpse, so probably through drowning - in order to prevent her (or I suppose him) from returning from the dead, spikes were driven through the body. There have been actual skeletons found with iron spikes driven into the bones. I thought this was just too bizarre to ignore, so I set upon creating a Witch's Jawbone.

I elaborated on the real version by supposing that if the iron spikes were to prevent the witch from returning from the dead, that they somehow locked her (or, still could be his) powers away inside their bones unable to escape or be used after death. So these Witch's Jawbones became a black market kind of item, used by either apprentice witches, wizards, warlocks and anyone dabbling in dark magic in their practices as a source of magic to enhance their own or as a magic catalyst in alchemy or supernatural devices.

I just happened to have a jawbone from a medical skeleton, so I cleaned up the seams as best I could, moulded that and cast it in clay so I could, rather than sculpt it from nothing, sculpt the damage and whatnot from the spikes and speed up the process a little bit. I was attempting to have this done last minute for a local Horror Festival, but I wasn't able to.

The sculpt turned out great. I was originally supposed to get a small supply of old blacksmithed nails, the squared off kind, but that never happened although I did get my hands on one. So I moulded and cast those in clay, altering each of the seven nails I'd use accordingly. I moulded and cast them in resin - which wasn't the best idea as they came out somewhat fragile, making this not a great idea for a limited run. I'd like the piece to be sturdy, not something you can't even handle without fear of breaking it.

But I kept going, and with very little time and even less supplies, I attempted to mould the jawbone. I did a miserable job of it and ran out of silicone halfway through so the mould itself was pitiful and probably wouldn't hold up to more than one casting. It didn't.

I managed to cast it and get it cleaned up, got the nails into the more or less right spots on the jawbone and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, but I'll definitely be using real nails I think if I try this for a limited run. How limited will depend on how many nails I can get my hands on, I don't want to order online as it'll just jack the price up on the final piece big time, so I'm on the hunt locally for a batch of nails all produced together, I don't want random sizes, it just makes fitting them too much effort in the end and again would drive the cost up.

But I have a copy for myself for now and it sits on the shelf with all the other random stuff I've made over the years. This is definitely a display piece though that I'd really like to attempt a small, limited run of, boxed up just like this as well so it's something that has a little more of a completely finished display piece for wherever or even as set decoration for a movie or tv show.

UPDATE: if you made it this far and actually read everything - first off, congratulations - and secondly, I've sourced some real antique nails, possibly even iron, so I will within the next month be doing a very limited run of only 5 of these, case included as well. No idea of the pricing at this point though.

Werewolf Red Riding Hood

While it’s not a totally unique idea to turn Little Red Riding Hood into a Werewolf, usually it’s done cute or dark, but I decided to turn her into a punkish bounty hunter.

I kept the makeup simple, as I usually do, because I didn’t want it to look like furry, more like a human in control of her wolf side and is most always partially transformed.

My Last Movie...more like fake movie trailer really.

I've been thinking about this off and on over the last few months, and nearly every time it came to mind I always thought an interview with Patton Oswalt I once heard., he was discussing his thoughts on being a successful comedian. I'll admit I don't recall some exact points, but the basic idea was that he believed in order to be a success in his business (and I think it translates to any creative business) you actually have to enjoy the work of your peers and allow yourself to appreciate their success in order to become inspired by it. I think I agree with that idea, which is why I don't think I'll ever be successful, even if I wanted to, as a filmmaker  but feel I will find success in doing special effects.

This might offend a few folks, I can't say I really care anymore - because some folks look to be offended in everything anyway, so why bother tiptoeing around the point. What it comes down to is this, I don't care about indie/amateur movies overall. I don't enjoy watching them, I can't stand people going on and on about their "awesome script". I just don't give a big, fat, wobbly ass about them. I think I did at one point, but because of so many negative experiences I've grown to kind of hate the whole idea.

There are a small select few, locally speaking, whose talent and dedication to what they do, that I respect and actually enjoy working with. And let me say it again for the cheap seats...A SMALL SELECT FEW.  I think about 4 or so, they should know who they are.

And this has nothing to do my own abilities as a filmmaker vs someone else's,  I make bad movies on purpose because it allows me to cut corners with a justification of "it's supposed to be that way", so don't read this and think this is some personal slam of my movies vs yours (or theirs), I AM NOT AND WILL NEVER BE A FILMMAKER - so let's leave it at and don't worry about it.

So the actual point of all this is why I feel I might find success doing SPFX, because I do see things being made by my peers (albeit online only since I'm the only one locally that I'm aware of) that I enjoy and find inspiring, I'm happy for their successes (even when I'm in a constant state of disappoint about my lack thereof), I enjoy talking to some of them even when we don't agree on something - to me it's a dialog about something we both love, not an argument about who sucks and why - although they do happen, but it's usually a pretty one sided conversation about an individual, or group, bent on ripping people off with crap quality. There are those who are negative and just want to tear things down, they exist everywhere and I've learned to suss them out and just sidestep or ignore them.

And even to elaborate a touch more on my whole anti-FaceOff seeming rant, I never intended it to come off like that - it's something I do enjoy watching and talking about and there are definitely some works being made on that show I find to be just amazing to look at and have even seen a few concepts here and there I've wanted to steal to incorporate into my own designs, I just don't like the idea of televised/heavily edited competition in a field I don't feel I'm into.

I'm friends on Facebook with more random makeup artists than filmmakers, and most of them added me because they somehow found my work - again, in special effects, not as a filmmaker. I've never had a random filmmaker see my work and actually comment about how they appreciated it or anything really like that, with makeup artists, it happens quite often.

I've gotten more work as an makeup artist, I've made more money, I'm less stressed (and oddly enough I enjoy the stress of it), I enjoy the collaboration with the few folks I've done with for - to be perfectly honest, I never really had any of that as a filmmaker.

So, because of all this I'm done making movies. I always said I did it for fun and when it wasn't fun anymore, there was no point in doing it. Now I've got 3 movies all shot and mostly edited that need audio work I'll probably turn out over the next year, first being Moonshine of the Damned lined up for early October, but I've one last project that's been gnawing away at me that I'd really love to do and then just drop the whole thing.

I've had this idea for an HP Lovecraft/Alfred Hitchcock movie, the concept is continually changing, but visually I can already see it in my head. I want to create an epic looking, almost Lord of the Rings Lovecraft movie with Hitchcock cinematography and plot. It's a bit of a tall order, but I think the two can actually blend together brilliantly since both heavily feature paranoia as an overall theme in their works.

The new title to the project is The Thief of Innsmouth (tentatively, it's changed so many times already). Originally the lead was to be a Demon, as I seem to love putting Demons into movies for no good reason, I'm changing that to have a lead who's a human in order to play up the horrific elements of the good townsfolks of the mob controlled town of Innsmouth. I'll borrow a lot from The Shadow Over Innsmouth story for the setting and throw in a more of a Hitchcock twist of a case of mistaken identity as a man is hired to do something (I've no idea yet what the motivation is here) to the crime lord of Innsmouth, Cthulhu himself and weird shit like that.

It's an odd twist on the whole thing. It's an incredibly expensive endeavor - which is why this project will only be a trailer. A roughly 2 - 3 minute trailer of the most awesome, epic, mutant fish people gangster/horror movie ever. And I'm not really a Gangster movie fan, it just feels like the right element to throw in there.

I'm only looking at a 2 - 3 day shoot, as many makeup FX as I can possibly muster, which will be easy since I'm already embarking on a slowly growing line of Lovecraft inspired prosthetics - so this trailer will in fact also be a commercial for all that awesomeness as well. I'll try to do some location shooting, but possibly a lot of studio/greenscreen stuff as well since we're pretty limited for really great locations for this sort of thing.

And that's it. I'm done making movies. Next spring I'm planning on one last fake movie trailer - there's always the possibility of collaborations, but only where I'm not the one pushing the project forward on my own, I'll just be following someone else's lead.

However, there is always the slightest possibility that if the trailer turns out and I can create a brilliant script, I might try the grant thing again and that is the only way I'd ever attempt to do a movie again, none of this out of pocket shit anymore. It's just not worth it.