GelatinBooBoo
From Simreal
Gelatin. You know, that powdery stuff sold under the brand name Jello (among others). Boiled skin, dried and made into dust. Amazing stuff.
I bought insane amounts of the stuff from Bulk Foods Online. This is mixed into a heavy mixture that is suitable for props and makeup. In fact, gelatin was used for makeup before the advent of foam latex, and is still used. It has great elasticity (it is made from skin, after all) and good "body". It can be used solid or foamed, too.
The downside of gelatin is that it is susceptible to heat -- it starts going soft at 100 degress farenheit. Under hot lights or sunshine, it can melt!
Gelatin Base
All gelatin uses begin with the base formula. The proportions are not at all critical, but here are the ones I used. These are all by WEIGHT. I have a kitchen scale that I use for this.
If you want to work by volume, these ratios work too (though the units are huge):
- 4 cups Water
- 3 cups Glycerin
- 2.5 cups Gelatin
The glycerin is used to stabilize the mixture, so it holds its size and shape better. It also makes it sweet, but that's probably not important. To make it even less resistant to moisture changes, you can use liquid sorbitol (a sweetener) in place of the water, or dissolve a bunch of powdered sorbitol in your water.
An additional, optional, stabilizer is a small amount of painting medium (ummm, like thick paint base). I haven't used this, so I can't say one way or another about its value.
I found that mixing the gelatin is a huge pain! Clumps! Horrible clumps of stinky powdered cow skin! I can barely eat Jello to this day.
The secret is two-fold. First, put your water and glycerin in your mixing container and then heat it to 110 degrees or so. Then, using a jiffy mixer (or something else, not a spoon unless you like clumps), create a sucking vortex in the water and sprinkle the gelatin near it.
This will mix bubbles into it, but they float to the top as a skin of foam that can be removed later.
Now, once it is all mixed up, find a container that you can put a ziplock bag into, like you would put a trash bag into a trash can. Pour your mixture into one or more of these bags, seal them, and put them in the fridge. You want the shape of the bag to be tall and skinny rather than its natural flat state, so the foam floats to the top in a way that is easy to cut off.
Once it is hard, you can peel the bag off, trim the foam away, and then you have a block of gelatin base.
To use is, you simply re-heat it in a double-boiler or microwave until it melts. Cast it, paint it on, whatever... this is great stuff.
Foaming Gelatin
Gelatin can be foamed, making a soft, light, and stretchy prosthetic or prop. It will expand to several times its natural size and it becomes opaque due to the bubbles. If you add color to your gelatin, it will get very pale as it foams, so experiment to get the results you want. Foamed gelatin also takes makeup reasonably well.
The foaming ingredients are two powders, mixed together, and added to the melted gelatin base. By weight:
- .05 Baking Soda
- .05 Tartaric Acid
This is just a teaspoon or so of each, for the volumes given above. Using less gives you less gas, more gives more...
Using Gelatin
Make a mold, either a two-part mold or a mold plate where you have sculpted a boo-boo on a flat surface and cast around that.
Apply mold release. Gelatin is really reall sticky, and you WILL need a mold release on any type of mold. I used spray cooking oil.
Heat your gelatin, foam if desired.
Pour into the mold.
Make it cold. Room temperature doesn't really cut it for when you want to remove the piece, I find. I set a pan of ice on a towl on the mold to chill it.
Remove the piece. Apply to the victim, er, actor with spirit gum.
Note that you want extremely thin edges on your appliance. Stick the bulk of the appliance on the actor first, and then tear off the extra stuff at the thinnest points of the edge. From there, you can use witch hazel to blend the gelatin edges into the actor.
At least that's the theory.
A Test
My first test was on Tall Matt (the person), and it turned out beatifully! I was impressed. This was the first and, apparently, last time it worked for me. I think the problem was (a) the makeup room was far too hot, (b) I was usually too rushed, and (c) my appliance was a bit small and tedious.
Or maybe I just suck.
This is one version that ended up on Matt (the character).
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This is a variation on Matt.
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One day, I made five or six of these things, each one failing in new and special ways. So I gave up and just PAINTED the booboo on his head. It didn't have the dimensionality of the gelatin, but on film a good painting is as good as a bump for most shots.
After that, I continued to paint it on. Much easier.
I've not given up on gelatin, though. It's really nifty stuff. You can get videos on using it at FX Supply.
There is one scene where Adrian actually wiped off a corner of his boo-boo and I didn't notice... and there are a few frames of film showing it! Heh. Something for the nit-pickers to spot.
