The Monkey Rodeo Project Update

I'm pretty sure I stated this before, but in case I didn't, the main point of the project is to create a bunch of short movies from the same world as Malice. I'm hoping to do around 10, although the number has been changing from time to time as some projects get cut and some even combined. For instance I wanted to do an old 50's style Atomic Age monster movie, and then I wanted to do a 3D one as well, so they became one.

There was an computer animated one I wanted to do, a prequel to Malice, but I cut it for now since doing 3D animation is my day job and I just didn't feel like taking on something so huge, regardless of how short it might be.

And more were added and dates were pushed around. I was hoping to do them all this year, but if I want to do them justice, a couple have to be pushed back to next spring.

So there's the updated list so far:

Demon Rum - already finished!

Cronus - starting production in early May. I still have a lot of work to do to keep it on track, but so far so good.

Untitled Giant Monster Movie - this one gave me a lot of trouble. I very clearly set out what I wanted to do with this and how simple I wanted it to be and it wasn't working at all. So that lastest idea will end up being several small little segments. Sort of a write-in show on "facts about giant monsters." We'll see how this progresses. I intend to shoot it in June.

Bimbo Zombie Killers - shooting in early July. This one is fairly easy to set up, there's minimal props, just a lot of gore and a massive cast of extras will be needed - so far so good though.

The Horrible Alien Brain Monsters from Outer Space in 3D - the script is nearly done, should be good to shoot this in August. Since it's an old 50's style movie, sets are minimal and cheap, as are costumes and acting. Should be fun.

Karl (Working Title) - a documentary about Karl, a demonic antiquities dealer. Inspired by The Office and Extras.

Grayson and Gortch - still working on the script, although the plot is worked out. There'll be lots of makeup and FX in this one, I'll need to make sure I have enough time to work it all out. Should be ready to shoot in September.

Squad Z - probably next spring/summer. The script is being worked on, it'll have to be translated to Japanese first though. Lots of costume work to be done.

The Brotherhood - next summer. Loads of costumes, sets, props and makeup. This is going to be a very epic short. I really want to make sure we make something that looks good, not campy, but seriously good. We'll even be building - hopefully - a set for the final scene. Way more to come on this one.

Untitled Musical - next spring/summer. Insprired by Dr. Horrible I decided we should really do a musical. Joss Whedon makes it look way too easy though. I'm working out a plot and we'll wind the music through it. I was hoping to do it this year, but that's just not going to happen with the amount of work needed.

That's it.

EDIT: I forgot about the Karl documentary so I added it back into the list and removed the untitled 10th project. It was just an idea anyway, there was no script.

Petey's New Forehead

I took the time tonight to make an attempt at sculpting the Bofa prosthetic. I must say I'm fairly pleased with the result. I guess someone who was experienced might not be too impressed, but I'm just starting out and I'm happy when it doesn't look like a giant tumor.

I'm hoping I can get enough supplies in soon to finish off the rest of the prosthetics. We'll soon see how that goes. But for now, here's a couple shots of the hopefully soon to be prosthetic for Bofa.

Bofa's Prosthetic

One of the characters from Cronus is a crime lord called Bofa, played by Pete Murphy. With 2 of my 4 actors to be in makeup away elsewhere and obviously unable to have a mold of their face done, I got hold of Pete and managed to finally get a decent mold made.

It wasn't perfect, but it will work just fine I reckon. You can see from the picture that the alginate, the blue crap on Pete's face was really lumpy - that was something I was well aware of but was just too lazy to fix. I even just bought something to better mix it with and just didn't use it. Lesson learned, but it didn't impact the final outcome.

After my 2 failed attempts, I was able to figure out the best way to make these life casts and it should work just fine for everyone else.

Another thing I kinda realized is that you can never use enough plaster bandages. When it seems like you might've used enough - you're only about a third of the way done really. Still - didn't bugger up the final mold so no harm done.

The bright spots on the cast of Pete's face below are the non-mixed lumps of alginate. Those shouldn't be there.

This last part was a little frustrating. UltraCal is not the easiest material to work with, you really need to understand how it acts before you can become efficient with it. While the image below is obviously far from perfect, I'm pretty confident it should suffice for what I need it to do. Not terribly impressive looking, but it's functional.


Next up is sculpting the prosthetic, I'm fairly comfortable with this part. I'm even pretty sure I won't have too many problems making the negative mold either. Actually mixing and baking the prosthetic - I've no idea how that's going to work. I've never gotten far enough to really want to attempt it yet.

The worst part would be not knowing how the final piece will turn out, luckily I can just use the cheap homemade foamed gelatin to test the mold first before wasting the foam latex.

And the most annoying part of this whole process is actually getting UltraCal 30 to make the molds with. It's really hard to track down a place that carries it anywhere nearby. There is a company in Ontario that carries it, but they sell it in 100 lb bags and it's more expensive to ship it then what it costs to actually buy it. I've heard Hydrocal is a decent substitute - but not knowing enough about the materials in this process and how they interact makes it hard to swap things out.

I did find a place in Dieppe, New Brunswick, a gypsum supply place that supposedly carries a whole line of Hydrocal products, so that's hopeful. An afternoon trip would have me set for some time and cost way less then having it shipped.

I'm also hoping that some local dentists might have UltraCal on hand. It's actually used to make dental molds. So I might have the option of making an arrangement with one of them should they use it - or whatever dental plaster they might use. It's pretty close to the same application as I need it for, and should work just as well.

We'll see how that goes I guess.

And today I start working on the office set for Cronus. I'm going to get some photos, do up some sketches and get some measurements and plot out how it will look. Should be good.

Slow Progress

After a couple weeks of steady progress, things feel like they've kinda come to a halt. We're still 5 and a half weeks off from the target shooting date, mostly everything is taken care of - but the prosthetics are still nowhere.

So far I've yet to even get a decent lifecast to start working with - without which I can't do anything else. The sculpting part I'm not worried about. It's the mold making and final prosthetic I'm still iffy on. I'll first have to create workable mold before I can even start thinking about making the foam latex and then baking it. In reality, if I had a single good day to work on it will full access to everything I need, I should be able to crank something out - that has yet to happen though.

Cronus Prosthetic sketch

I'm hoping the next week will show some significant progress on this part, or I'll have to seriously start rethinking things.

The major locations are taken care of. The bulk of the costumes are as well. Most of the props are too. This is all that's left really, while 5 weeks is easily enough time to do it all - should I not have enough supplies, shipping time could seriously screw things up. It's hard to find a lot of this stuff in Canada and anything coming through the border isn't really time reliable.

Luckily none of the prosthetics should be too elaborate. And if I have all the mold ready at the same time, there's a good chance I won't waste too much of the materials for creating the final prosthetic. Still, I'll be ordering more as soon as possible just in case.

We'll see how the next week progresses.

A Massive Oversight...

You've heard the phrase "too smart for your own good?" Well, I have a whole new perspective on it.

All this time, while I was so impressed with myself having created all the CG characters for Malice, I neglected to ever do an animation test. Had I done that, I would've found out that it won't work. The models are too complex as they are and after rendering one frame there's not enough memory left to immediately render even a second frame. Which, if you haven't guessed yet, makes it rather impossible to render a full video sequence.

So, after some minor research I'm back on track. I've had to reassemble the materials used to texture the characters and use a slightly different method to create the finer details and finally render the characters. So far the tests are going well - shouldn't have too many problems now. You never know though.

And in other news: Cronus is progressing really well. Almost too well. The locations are nearly all taken care of. The costumes are well on their way to being done. The props are sussed out and will be hunted down, made or purchased over the next few weeks. And I should be cranking out a prosthetic or two within the next 2 weeks.

We had a script reading, the first time I've ever done such a thing, with all the actors (who actually have lines) the other night. It went well, no changes are being made in the script, that's promising.

The optimist in me is taking this at face value and that all is well. The pessimist in me is waiting for something to go wrong, as it usually does. In any case, the project is ahead of schedule - which never happens, hence the pessimism.

Adrian and Draper

Pete and Natasha

That's all for now.

The Monkey Rodeo: Bimbo Zombie Killers

With pre-production on Cronus well underway, I've been working on finalizing the script for then next short - as you might be able to tell from the delightfully subtle title above. The name of the movie speaks for itself, I'm not sure I really have to explain it.

But I will. Bimbo Zombie Killers will be my attempt at the old school horror movie. A little of the 70's exploitation flicks, throw in some splatter (a lot of splatter), three white trash chicks and a small army of redneck zombies.

Should be fun. Hope to shoot this near the end of June.

Cronus character concept sketch

I intend to do this for most of the character for probably each of short movies. I just took a larges sized, full bodied shot and just drew over it, adding and removing whatever was necessary to make a rough sketch of what I want the character to ultimately look like.

So this is basically what Draper should look like as Cronus.
That's it. Should have more soon.

Cronus so far...

So far this project is going really well. The script came together at just the right time, at least it seemed that way. So far casting is going well. I haven't met with everyone yet, but so far I think I made the right choices.

Location scouting hasn't totally started yet, at this point I'm just sort of working out exactly what I'll need. I have several options for most locations. the hardest location will be Cronus's Office - mainly because there will be a major fight scene there. I wanted to really go overboard and pay an homage to the fight scene from The Punisher with the Russian.

If you've never seen it, it's a pretty brutal scene. They almost destroy an entire apartment - going through walls and doors and whatnot. I'd love to be able to go through walls, but that would involve either finding a larger space to build a set, finding a location that we could destroy or even finding a location that we could just create a false wall without damaging the existing place too much.

None of these are really viable options with my time line and budget unfortunately. There's also the added hassle of props for the office. The most important piece is one of those Partner's Desk - those big mahogany desks that weigh a ton. There's just no way I could find one, or afford to have one taken to a location - so I decided to try building a cheap one and making it look as good as possible.

It's not soon too much and I've ways around showing too much of it. Then I came up with the idea - if I build it, why not build it to destroy it. I can't go through a wall, but I can smash through a desk a lot easier and way more safely. I discounted balsa wood because it's way too expensive for such a large prop and it's still wood - I'm not comfortable having an actor thrown through a wooden surface, back first at that, to have him smash it to pieces. Splinters and all that.

I'm sure someone might think they have a brilliant alternative - but it's not them paying for it, making it or going through it - so I don't really care what they think. I can make a desk with styrofoam for about $50, damned near exact, and very safely have someone smash through it.

If it wasn't black and white, it probably wouldn't work very well. I don't think desks are made from pink wood. i just have to hope we get it perfect in one shot - not enough time or money to make 2 desks.

I'm slowly working on costumes and makeup ideas. I hope to get some reference photos of everyone within the next week to design everything. By April I'm hoping to have the costumes taken care of, as well as the locations and the makeup at least well underway.

We'll see how this all works out. So stay tuned, this should be interesting.

Cronus Update

Well, I'm finally more or less back to work. By that I mean I've hard a hard time getting myself motivated to do anything after overworking myself in January and then losing Scully, but I finally made a bit of a breakthrough today - and on Thomas Jane's birthday at that. If you've no idea who he is, he's on of my favorite actors, even though he's only done a couple good movies. So I spent the day watching a few of his movies and working.

I did some work on some Telos stuff, not awesome fun - but it's coming along and I'm sort of finding some enjoyment in it again.

The bigger news is that I think I've finally worked out the plot to Cronus - the next of the Monkey Rodeo short movies. The reason, if you haven't been following, that this is a bit of a big deal is that it's a massively twisted and complicated idea to fit into a 5-15 minute time frame.

It's basically the Maltese Falcon in 5-15 minutes, but with demons. That's my easy explanation. I've been working and reworking everything to make all the character's motivations work, and their interest in the MacGuffin of the movie - the Gateway Key to Hell. And after dozens of plot outlines I finally got one that works, and not only works, but works really well. I managed to get all the details I wanted to have in there to make it work.

Now, I just have to write it. That's the easy part for now. I'm planning on having a first draft by March 1st.

Also, I'm hoping to get to work on the prosthetics big-time next week. I really need to see if this is going to work or not and soon. My deadline to shoot this is mid-April, not too bad. There's still time.

We'll see how things go.

the Monkey Rodeo Book

I've been working on this for months now and I've finally got a finished copy made. There's a few minor mistakes I made so I'm using this as a sort of prototype and making the corrections now. As well I found a couple photos I wanted to use but thought I'd lost, literally hours after I ordered the book to be printed.

It's 92 pages, measures 8x10 inches and has a little over 200 pictures. This version is a hardcover with a dust jacket, it costs about $42. A softcover version is available for $30. I got this done at blurb.com, they have downloadable software for making your own books. It's incredibly easy to use.

Right now I'm doing up the 2nd version, fixing all the mistakes I missed. I've picked a few folks involved heavily in the project to get a copy of these books, everyone else I will collect their emails and give them the info to order one for themselves. After that, I may put the book up for public sale.

Foamed Gelatin Prosthetics

Not a great idea.

I was hoping for a cheap foam latex substitute, something that didn't require a lot of work. I'd read about this foamed gelatin stuff that some guy, I think in Florida, had. I looked around at all the companies that supposedly carried this - not one of them did. Then I found a recipe for making the stuff myself.

It worked pretty good, really cheap, fast and easy to make. However it's basically crap. It's alright maybe for Halloween or something, but it's by no means a substitute for foam latex prosthetics for a movie. It's too rubbery, heavy and will not take the grease makeup I usually use. I could probably find another method of colouring the makeup, but I reckon whatever time and money I'd save not using foam latex would even out with an alternate makeup source.

I guess it depends on what you're using it for whether or not it'd be of any use. In my case, it's not of much use - other then testing my molds to make sure they will work. Which is useful for now, but who knows - with some testing and work I might find another use for it yet.

It was a good experiment - and while it won't replace the foam latex, it might be useful for something else.

If you're interested in trying it, it's just equal parts Liquid Glycerin, Powered Gelatin (not jello or flavoured stuff) and water. Mix it up, it'll be pretty thick, then heat it up in the microwave, about 20 seconds at first, trying again in 10 seconds bursts to make sure it's thinned out enough. You have to be careful not to get in on you, it's bascially like molten plastic and will not come off, it'll just burn and turn you into Freddy Kruger.

You can even colour it with some acrylic paint, or something similar I suppose. What use you'd have for it without a mold, I don't know really. And you can supposedly, I would assume while it's not too hot, apply it right to your skin - for whatever reason you feel you need to have a rubbery chunk of gelatin on your skin. If you do a search for "foamed gelatin" you'll find some other sites that go into more detail.

Other then that, not much else to report. I'm swamped with other projects again - hoping to clear my schedule enough to get back to work on Cronus and eventually Malice.

Better News

In a break from the recent updates, I have some rather good, or at the very least decent news.

I don't think I mentioned it here, but I will now since in a couple weeks I'll either be raving about it or complaining. With all the photos taken over the course of the shoot, I wanted to do something more then just make the movie and have pile of pictures taking up harddrive space to show for it otherwise. So I made a book.

Go check out www.blurb.com. I used about 200 photos, 90 pages and assembled a rather nice 8x10 book. It features a lot of behind the scenes shots from a few of the more interesting scenes. A lot of makeup shots, several pages on the CG characters and 4 pages of stills from the movie. It may not be the most awesome thing in the world, but it's pretty damned cool.

It should be here in a couple weeks. I should point out the link is to the site that makes these books, not to the actual book itself. For now it remains private, but I might open it up for public sale once those involved in the project have decided they would like one or not.

Also, I should be getting new equipment soon, like today or tomorrow. Either a new still or video camera, depends on my mood.

And finally, I haven't been having much luck getting motivated to do the prosthetic thing, but I came upon an extremely cheap and easily made substitute for foam latex. I just found it a few hours ago and have yet to test it, that will be later today. So we'll see what happens there I guess.

I've been slowly recovering from the loss of Scully, not to bring it up again. I had that last week to get used to the idea and I'm glad I was able to spend her last hours with her.

Rest in Peace, Scully.

Scully passed away last night, shortly before 1 am. I'm not sure what else to say.

She didn't go quietly like I'd hoped, she fought the whole time and hung on as long as possible.

I apologize for a particularly morose post, but I'm still trying to find way to deal with this. Scully was a pretty unique cat, the few that knew her probably realize that. She had more personality them most people I know - I wish that was a joke, unfortunately it's true. I think she was even smarter then most people I know.

But the only thing I could think of after she died, was as as a kitten how much she farted.

I found her a little over 13 years ago as I was leaving a flea market, a woman was standing outside with a kitten in her hands. She was trying to get rid of them, she said she had another on in the backseat of her car. It was Scully...or would be Scully I guess.

She was standoff-ish at first, it took her a couple weeks to warm up. She'd often make this weird face I've never seen before and I'm not sure how she did it either, she actually looked like she stretched her face or something - it was supposed to be her attack face I guess. It wasn't terribly scary.

Once she sat in front of a mirror for almost 2 weeks and finally figured out what it was. She realized that if was her reflection. I won't bother going into detail about how I know what, but trust me.

She talked a lot. When I came home, if I spoke to her, she usually began a little tirade of chirps. Sometimes out of the blue if I talked to her she'd respond as if she knew exactly what I was talking about.

For some reason she loved garlic and onions. Moreso as cream cheese, mind you.

I'll miss her.

Scully

I debated about whether or not I should bother doing this here, and then I obviously decided I would. Seems something the average person might find silly, I'm not sure and I really don't care. My cat, Scully, has fallen rather ill. And by "rather" I mean "seriously".

I guess to explain why I would bother documenting this event, or whatever you want to call it. I'm not a people person, not exactly a huge surprise there. There are very few people who I can stand for prolonged periods, because there's an aspect of their company I enjoy. So in the case of Scully, it goes beyond just being a pet, there's something about the presence of her company I enjoy - and we'll leave it that.

Onto the point, about a week ago is when I first noticed she might be sick. She was losing weight, but I was working 16 hours a day to meet a deadline so I didn't notice whether or not she was eating properly, mainly because there was no change in her otherwise.

Then I noticed one morning I hadn't seen her grooming herself in some time. That's a bad sign when it comes to cats. Luckily I was able to get her a vet appointment the following day. The visit eventually reveal her to have a condition called Fatty Liver. It has something to do with the way cats process fat and there was a buildup of it in her liver and it will eventually lead to liver failure if not treated or caught in time.

She spent the weekend at the vets where they began treating her. Monday afternoon the bloodtest came back showing some minor improvement. That was a massive relief, I was expecting the exact opposite and worse. I was told that she would be better off at home since she seemed rather stressed to be there.

She's been home now since Tuesday morning and whether or not there's been any improvement is hard to tell. On her visit today I was told I might not see any improvement for a week or 2 - that's good I guess. But because Fatty Liver is usually a secondary condition caused by something else, that's not good.

See, if it was a simple infection that might've put her off eating, then it should clear up and she should respond pretty quick to the treatment. Since she is not responding quickly, it's possible she has a very serious condition that they've yet to be able to see.

She's 13 and a few months, yeah that's old but it's not ancient. Indoor cats can live a lot longer then 13.

As far as signs of physical improvement, I'm not sure if there's any real one's or I'm just wanting to see them. She seems to wander about a lot more now and was pretty insistent on trying to get into bed last night. I take those as good signs, but they might be just moments that mean nothing.

While I'm trying to be hopeful she'll get better, I'm not very confident she will. I'm reasonably sure that eventually I'll make to make a choice to continue trying to treat her or not. Not something I'm looking forward to.

For right now, she's a little wobbly and unstable when she walks. She seems to slowly get more steady, very slowly and very little more with each day.

I have to force feed her through a tube that's been surgically implanted in her neck. And it's a lot of food over the course of the day, way more then she'd normally eat at that. She's keeping most of it down, she does still get sick and throw up, but I think she's keeping enough down to get something out of it.

She's quiet, sometimes wandering to find another place to lay down and has a series of places about the apartment she wanders to and from. She's taking it pretty easy for the moment.

We'll see what the weekend brings and how her next visit on Tuesday morning goes, they'll be doing more blood work and while she seems at best stable for the moment, hopefully there will be improvement by then.

Another misconception

Over the last year I've had a few folks mention this to me, and more then a few in the last week or more, so I thought I'd clear this up - supposing any of them read this. If not, that's their problem.

The misconception is that I made all the prosthetics that I've used so far in Malice and even Demon Rum - while I certainly appreciate the thought that these folks think I can do that kind of work, I didn't make them. I bought them, coloured them and applied them - that's all.

I am in the process of learning how to though, albeit slow and painfully useless so far. I've nothing to show for it yet, but within the month or so I'm hoping I will. Stay tuned for that of course.

Anyway, with that cleared up, I do have a little something something to show you. Mal'Vash, Malice's main villain, is about 98% complete - there's a few minor spots that need touching up, some things I'll probably let go because they just won't be noticeable on the screen. I guess it'll depend on how things progress from here - I might just want to be done with it and try to find a place where I'm satisfied with how he looks.

I did a little mock up preview poster for The Monkey Rodeo: Malice, it'll be the only image of Mal'Vash you'll see until the movie. It shows enough, but not too much I don't think.

Minor Mal'Vash Update

He's almost done. I'd say about 75%-80% done. And I think I can safely say he's easily the most awesome looking CG character I've ever done. I hate to give that kind of a buildup and then have to say you won't see it until you see the final movie though.

This month's looking a little crazy with other work, so I don't see him being completed for some time yet unfortunately.

Mal'Vash and some other stuff

It's taken a long time, but I've finally settled on a design for the big bad of the movie, Mal'Vash. It was pretty easy actually, just working out some minor details. He's modeled and being sculpted for more details at the moment - so far, so good. I'm hoping he'll be done in a couple weeks time.

Otherwise that's all I've been working on. I played around with some ideas for the prosthetics, nothing actually done - just sort of theorized what might or might now work. I'm hoping to get time this weekend to test the new idea I have for mold making and then perhaps even put it to the test and actually, finally making a prosthetic.

That's really it, nothing terribly new at the moment.

Prosthetic Pain in the Ass

I tried making the negative mold for the Cronus prosthetic today and was pretty disappointed with the results. There are certain things you just have to learn on your own I guess and that's about the best thing I can take away from it.
It took a while to demold, and at first I thought for sure it was garbage, but once I got it free I found it was actually workable with a little fixing, which went well - until I noticed 2 major imperfections that were just no way around. So because of two imperfection about a week's worth of work is trashed.

There's supposed to be a seam, where the negative mold meets the positive that's the edge of the prosthetic - in this case there was a massive air bubble and a half inch of the jawline was ruined. If I tried making a foam prosthetic of this - there'd be a massive ugly looking wart on his jawline or it just would've have torn the prosthetic when I removed it from the mold.
Here a good inch along the side of the nose had been chipped away. I might have been able to get away with this, but again it was right along the seam and I really have no idea how bad this would have looked.

The thing is the sculpture is destroyed in the demolding process - it actually has to be in order to preserve the positive mold. One problem was dealing with the UltraCal, it's a tricky thing to work with - it stays too thin to do much with for so long and when it begins to set, you just have a few minutes or the whole thing is wasted. Luckily you can just add more, but it can cause some unwanted lines in certain cirsumstances.

Also, I used these resin horns from a prosthetic I bought on the one I was making and a couple were also destroyed in the demold - so this is a bit of a setback and a massive dissappointed really.

Although, I did learn a lot in all the mistakes I made. Doesn't change that I lost a lot of work, but I know better for the next time around. I don't know when I'll have the time or materials to make another mold of Draper's head - I still have the original, but it has problems I was hoping wouldn't cause more problems, which it did - but I guess that'll be the next step.

I have some ideas on how to make it work better next time already and some ideas to remove some of the "one use only" aspects of the process. We'll see.

Cronus

I finally had time to work on the first prosthetic for The Monkey Rodeo: Cronus. I made a small set of horns before this - not in the foam yet, just sculpted and made the molds. I was trying to figure out a right ratio for a small batch of foam to just do the horns - I gave up and decided I might as well start the face prosthetic for Cronus (there will be more for other characters).


It came out not too bad, not awesome, but this was my first ever attempt at sculpting something like this. The horns all came from another prosthetic that I bought online in hopes of it being the right for Cronus - it looked great, but it was way too small for Draper's face. So I decided to make my own based off that one.

With the one I bought, the horns all had to be glued on separately, I decided to make it all one piece. I'll find out soon enough if that was a bad idea. I'm going to try making the negative mold of this tonight possible, so we'll soon see how this is going to all work out.

Making a mold of Draper's Face

I won't say it went well, but it certainly wasn't the disaster I sort of expected.

If you've been paying attention, you probably know I just got supplies for making my own prosthetics. I've never really attempted anything like this before, nor am I really familiar with the materials involved or how they work.

The biggest problem I ran into was the fact that when I ordered the stuff, that ultimately cost me $550 after shipping and customs, $400 before, was that I asked - on the phone, so I was talking to a real person - if there was anything else beside what came in the kit that I would need to do this. The answer was a more or less no, maybe a few little things I could most likely get any any convenience store. I was okay with that, seemed reasonable.

Well, that was sort of a lie. A very big, another $200 lie actually. I won't bother going into what else was needed, but it was fairly easy to track it all down. Still, it would've been nice to have some idea, since it was pretty obvious from the phone conversation that I had no idea how to do this.

Anyway, I guess it was worth it. I probably could've spent three times as much experimenting on my own trying to figure out what I needed. It was a big help for the first step in doing this. I will say I learned a lot, and I know better what I need to do for next time.

I won't bother breaking down the process in too much detail, there's much better information on how to do this online pretty much anywhere if you really look.

First, I tried to minimize the amount of mess, so Draper
got himself a fancy new wardrobe.

Now a swanky bald-cap!

Then I slathered face cream and petroleum jelly on his face,
just for fun - this wasn't really part of the process.
Actually, it's so all his facial didn't get ripped out.

And then I mixed up some alginate - I hate this stuff.
It's one of those picky ratio mixes and you can really
only use it once to make a casting - it's really crumbly
and sets up fast.

Mulder was amused by the whole process at least.

Then some plaster bandages to give the alginate
a strong backing, it's too weak to hold it's shape on it's own.

And about 20 minutes later it came out not too bad.
Not great, but not bad for my first attempt.

I sucked at this part. Again one of those weird ratio mixtures
38:100 - Ultracal to Water.

And after leaving it for as long as I could stand this thing came out.

There were some air bubbles, they can be removed with a dremel though - if you have one. But the area around the nose was pretty broken. We were nervous about getting too much of the alginate around his nose, it was so runny and heavy it kept sliding down and almost covering his nostrils.

No worries though, the prosthetic I intend to make doesn't need nostrils. The other annoying part you can't really see here is that I did have any proper way to support the mold while putting the Ultracal in and it kinda flattened the tip of the nose - shouldn't effect it too much though - I wasn't planning on added too much prosthetic there either.

So now I have to sculpt the prosthetic mask I want to make on this, and then make a negative mold. The two will then go together with the liquid foam latex in it, I'll cook it for a bit and if I did alright I will have my very first prosthetic - which will be for the character of Cronus in The Monkey Rodeo: Cronus.

We'll see how that all works out soon enough.