Saturday, April 10, 2010

Flying Monkey Prosthetic Appliance.

We used the same techniques for this prosthetic as we did for the Zombie. They were both made the same year with mostly the same materials. The only difference was the addition of expanding latex foam for the monkey. We needed the foam because of the depth of the appliance. The monkey face stuck way out from Maggs face and needed filling so it wouldn't sag or cave in on her. We also decided we didn't want an appliance we had to spirit gum on. She wanted a mask she could wear and take off when she got hot or tired.
Here are the results and steps we took to get there.

We made a cast of Maggs face using plaster bandages. Remember the Vaseline on the hairline and eyebrows!!!

Jumping ahead a few steps to the sculpting process. Explained how we got the face positive in the zombie post. We used white plasticine for this one and it's hard to see it against the white plaster face pos of Maggs. Here is the rough out of the monkey. Just getting the basic size and shape right. She was greatly involved with this part of the sculpt.

You can see she's tired of making decisions here. I took over for a bit and did some detail. She watched and told me what she wanted. You can see here how far the sculpt sticks out from the face and why we needed the foam to reinforce the mask.

Some detail. We wanted to make a separate bottom jaw but decided later it looked pretty good without it.

It's really coming together here. Maggs helped make some of the little hair follicles and lip wrinkles too.

The cheek bits are hilarious, and I like the teeth. Maggie liked making the nostrils. She likes poking things in noses.
We made a cast of it at this point the same way we did the zombie prosthetic mold. Put the whole thing face up into a plastic bag lined box and put on a thin layer of Vaseline with a soft brush. Then we poured in some plaster and let it set. After we separated the two pieces we removed the plasticine sculpt so we just had the positive of Maggie's face and the mold of the whole prosthetic sculpt.
We drilled a hole in the face positive under the nose and above the top lip to relieve some of the pressure from the expanding foam. If you skip this step there is no where for the extra foam to go once it starts to expand and it ends up pushing the two molds apart.
We put three or four thin layers of latex on the inside of the prosthetic mold and the outside of the face positive to act as a skin for the foam. It's pretty pourous and doesn't look smooth.
Then we mixed up the foam, it was the first time using it, to say it reacts and starts expanding quickly is a vast understatement. It got HUGE immediately! So we poured the foam mix into the prosthetic mold and slapped the face positive into ot as fast as we could. We held it on there tight and wore gloves. The foam mix will stick to everything and never come off. Do this outside! It's smelly and if it gets on the good table there will be hell to pay.

Here is the mask piece after we removed it from the molds. It set up pretty quickly, like twenty minutes. Then we trimmed any extra latex off the piece with a razor.

Maggs is trying it on for size. Fit's great. She's such a monkey!

Here is the finished mask sewn onto the monkey costume. She wore it like a hood. We painted it with latex paint mixed with GAC 200 to keep it flexible. The ears were novelty ears we bought from a costume shop and painted out the same colours as the mask. We sewed them on too.

The only shot we have of Maggs wearing the suit. It had huge black feather wings, a red and blue vest and a fez. She was sweating so bad she couldn't keep up with the rest of the trick or treaters, but folkes loved the costume.