Demon Ash Vs Evil Dead

I've done a few cosplay style Demon shoots, turning recognizable fictional characters into Demons, and with the new Ash Vs Evil Dead show coming out on Halloween I figured it was the best time to do a Demon Ash.

The hardest part of this shoot wasn't the makeup, but the props. I originally had thought about using a real chainsaw and shotgun, I just happen to have had both lying around. But upon ripping apart the chainsaw, or trying to, I realized it just wasn't going to work as easily as I'd hoped. So I opted for a worbla chainsaw instead. I had a huge sheet of the stuff for another shoot that never happened this year, so I figured I might as well try. Then, since the chainsaw was worbla, I decided to do a fake shotgun as well.

It was a massive amount of work, both pieces, but I've really been wanting to properly tackle something with worbla, turn out a really awesome looking prop. So I spent a lot of time designing each piece and how it would all go together and whatnot.

This is the beginnings of the chainsaw body sculpted from pieces of styrofoam, glued together, seam filled with expanding Gorilla Glue. The side handle here was tossed out because it didn't look right.

The shotgun just before priming.

The worbla chainsaw before painting and adding any extra, non-worbla bits. 

And the finished piece. Weighs less than a single kilogram, fairly comfortable to wear too.

Overall I was really happy with how the pieces came out, it was a lot of work but well worth it. Not only was it used for this shoot, but another friend is going to a convention with me on Halloween weekend and she'll be doing a female Ash there.

As for the Deadites, very early on when I thought of this I decided I wouldn't use makeup on the Deadites, originally I wanted more, so I chose to with a mask instead - figuring I'd just clean up the edges in photo shop anyway.

I really wanted the crazy buggy eyes so I made a couple resin half-spheres and used them - taking into account where the wearer might be able to see and how easy it might be to hide the eye holes. Worked pretty well. While the mask seemed pretty campy and silly while sculpting and ever after painting them...

They're actually a little creepy when worn and put into context. I think even I might lose some sleep if I saw these things looking in my window at night, even during the day if I wanted expecting it.

So that was it. A decent way to spend an afternoon. And now I'll leave you with this:

Superior Blood Leech

This is one of those shoots that just sort of came out of wanting to make a messed up looking freaking prosthetic - something that ignores human facial anatomy. The design isn't original, I've seen different instances of it even after I sculpted my ages ago.

I just knew I wanted to make it a little more messy and organic looking - the idea of a series of mouths, or rows of teeth, while freaky looking, isn't exactly disturbing looking - at least not to me - because it's so surreal looking. So I tried making it look a little more fleshy and gross and I'm totally happy with the results.

Originally the shoot was to be done with another friend of mine, who likes the weirder/darker stuff, in another province in a really old, amazing looking cemetery - but that didn't happen for a couple reasons. I decided I need to get this shoot done and was looking into contacting some of my regular folks when a friend of the original model contacted me and we arranged it all right away and within a week had the shoot done.

This is actually the fastest makeup/photo shoot I've ever done. The makeup took six minutes to apply. I did make the piece all up beforehand - but I always do - but this one, because it requires next to no blending, was literally just slapped on, a little fiddling with the edges to get them to lay down and a quick blending with the makeup along the edges and six minutes later were were done. I also was doing them makeup out of the back of a car in a church parking lot beside a major roadway. I never took the time to notice if anyone was watching us.

And there you go. I will be selling these, but only on Etsy I think, or at least only when I have one made, I'm not going to offer them them up otherwise. It's a thick piece, so it takes a lot of foam and there's a buttload of the resin teeth that have to be made, so this one will be a little pricier than normal, I'm thinking $70.

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.