FaceCasting

From Simreal

1 Face Casting 1

Face Casting 1

We gathered Saturday afternoon at Andy's to see what we could learn about making positive replicates of our faces. We watched a video on subject (Michael Burnett Productions' "The Art of Special Make-up Effects volume 2: Basic Foam Rubber Appliance") and discovered we were somewhat under-prepared for the task.

The attendance list was:

Edwin Wise (coordinator)
Andy Heilveil (who graciously let us invade his house)
Marla Smith
Eric Lundquist
Don Colbath

Missing, but not forgotten, were:

Glenn Currie
Michelle DeFrance
Ryan (aka Foxfire)

Everyone had a face cast, and everyone got to do the application. It was fun! Each face, from start to finished product, took about an hour. A very consistant 20 minutes to get the fast molded and backed by plaster bandages, some fiddling about time, and 30 minutes for the Ultracal to set.

We had:

Mixing bowls
Wooden Spoons
Electric hand-beater (which was of little value)
Prosthetic slow-setting Alginate
Ultracal 30
12 rolls of 2" plaster-impregnated bandage
Measuring cup

We also needed:

Bald caps
Plastic to protect our clothes
More plaster bandages (they were back-ordered)
Burlap or Hemp fiber to make a walled cast (instead of poured).
Scale
Thermometer
Stopwatch
Paper towels
Garbage can
Lights so we could see!

Through the Miracle of Modern Andy, were able to acquire fuzzy doll stuffing instead of burlap, a bandana for a bald cap (since we were planning faces only - not full or half heads - this worked well), a bright red poncho for protection, a digital scale, a digital thermometer that we managed to get too wet and kill, a stopwatch, towels, and trash cans. But no lights. We did our work on a large wooden platform that was the upturned base for a waterbed, in the middle of Andy's living room.

Since we weren't too sure of our alginate, we ran a consistency and gelling test first. The instructions on the alginate bucket called for a 1:3 alginate powder to water ratio, by weight.

A settled cup of alginate weighs roughly 3 ounces. A cup of water weights 8, so this would be 1 cup alginate to 9 ounces of water, but we didn't go to so much trouble.

First Cast: Marla

Water, about 83 degrees Fahrenheit
2 cups settled alginate to 4 cups water (3:8 ratio)

This mixed up to a fairly thin mixture, that was also fairly difficult to keep on Marla's face (and she kept trying to breath it in one nostril).

After about six or seven minutes, it gelled up nicely, and we covered the mask with two rolls of 2" wide plaster bandages cut into various lengths (long, medium, and tiny bits for the nostrils).

Once those had hardened (about 2 1/2 minutes after the last one was applied), we peeled the whole thing off of her face.

Then, 2 cups of water were mixed with enough Hydrocal 30 to make a thin mixture. This was first painted into the mask to capture the fine detail, and then the rest was poured into the mask to top it off. It turns out that this was about twice too much hydrocal.

The Hydrocal set about 30 minutes later (hence, the 30 in its name) and we extracted this positive from the mold. It was beautiful!

Lessons Learned:

Contact lenses are uncomfortable when casting -- remove them!
Don't Laugh!
This mixture is thing and hard to work; but makes a very detailed mask. Kinda hard

to keep from inhaling it.

Each trial to come follows a variation on this pattern.

Second Cast: Eric

Water, about 94 degrees
2 cups alginate to 2.5 cups water

A fairly thick mixture, too thick to really be workable. Also, the warmer water set up at about 5:00 minutes, sooner than expected. We only got eyes on that one!

Retry!

Water, about 90 degrees
2 cups to 3 cups water

Better mixture, workable yet pliable.

Applied it a lot faster, too -- which is good, since it started to gell at 5:00 minutes and set at 6:00 minutes.

Made less plaster this time, too -- 1.5 cups water.

We had oiled Eric's beard, for fear of getting it bound into the alginate and making a mess of the mask. Instead, no alginate would stick to it, and we couldn't get the chin to form gracefully.

This is where we started making a thin-walled cast, as well. After painting the inside of the mold with plaster, we would take little clumps of the floofy stuffed-animal (or doll) filling and soaked it in plaster. This took some doing, since this was a plastic fill, and not terribly absorbent. Then, the globby blobs were pressed into place around the mold, making a strong and fairly efficient casting.

The only trouble was, this technique made more voids to be filled later. It could have been the fluff was too springy, and pulled away from the sides. Or maybe our plaster was too thin. We never really solved this one to our satisfaction that day.

Third Cast: Edwin

Water, about 85 degrees
2 cups alginate to 3 cups water

While this mixture is easy to work, it doesn't make as nice a mold. It would probably work better to use a 2:3.5 ratio... or even the original difficult 2:4 ratio of alginate to water.

This version gelled at about 6:30 minutes; a bit longer, due to the cooler water. Temperatures around 80 degrees seem optimal.

Casting the positive in the mold, the result turned out be be a pinched version of my face. The outer plaster backing to the alginate failed to hold its shape gracefully, and the sides had pressed together. The overall effect was to make me look remarkably like Lerch from the Addams' Family TV show.

We didn't notice this until after doing the next cast, but on Don's we used three rolls of bandage instead. Four to Six would be even better, for a solid, rigid backing. Of course, this would also be very heavy on the poor victim's, er, volunteer's face.

Fourth Cast: Andy

Water, about 80 degrees
2 cups alginate to 3 cups water

Here, we cleansed Andy's face with Witch Hazel to see if we could improve alginate adhesion (not that we had any problems with this, outside of Eric's beard). No noticeable effect.

Otherwise, this casting went much like the previous one. We did try to fill his mold in two passes, though. First mix was to paint the inside. After setting a bit, a second mix was used with the fluff to make it solid. No noticeable effect on the voids... so maybe we are painting it in wrong?