PORTFOLIO
2022
SILICONE
Faun Mask
For this costume design project, we were to create a mask for a character from a provided list of movies. One of them was Pan’s Labyrinth, a movie I was familiar with because of the practical effects but one that I had never actually seen. I took it as an opportunity to watch the movie and redesign the Faun character. I saw the character as neither good nor evil, and very unpredictable. Because of this, I decided to use a Rorschach Ink Blot as inspiration for the patterns on his face since, like the ink blot, his character can be interpreted many different ways. Another decision I made was to emphasize his age because it is one of the only things explicitly used to describe him in the movie – the fact that he is very old.
Process
STEP 1
First I sculpted the major forms out of regular Sculpey clay on a solid aluminum foil base.
STEP 2
Then I used references of human and goat anatomy and cut shapes out of Super Sculpey clay in order to get the muscle structure down.
STEP 3
I smoothed all the muscle shapes over and started to shape the details.
STEP 4
I then added wrinkles and fine lines for age and texture.
STEP 5
I included pores and dimpling in the skin for even more texture, then added final touches before baking the piece in an oven.
STEP 6
I pressed the sculpture into alginate, which is a substance that hardens to a squishy rubbery texture very quickly after mixing. My first alginate mold failed because I didn’t mix enough alginate and I mixed it too fast and didn’t pour it thin enough, meaning it had too many bubbles. I tried again with some changes and this time, it worked.
STEP 7
This is how the mold turned out. It’s nowhere near perfect, but I decided to go for casting it anyways.
STEP 8
I first brushed a layer of clear Smooth-On Dragon Skin silicone into the mold.
STEP 9
Then, I laid my Styrofoam head (covered in foil to prevent sticking) on top of the mold with some chopsticks to keep it from touching the silicone layer. To fill the space in between the head and the silicone, I poured Smooth-On Foam-It expandable foam in between the two.
STEP 10
This way, when the sculpture was demolded, it already had the form of a face on the backside and could be used as a mask without me having to hollow out the rigid foam. This is what it looked like immediately after demolding (foam with a silicone outer layer). I had to saw off and sand the sides but I was very happy with how it turned out especially considering the bubbles in the mold!
STEP 11
I used oil paints in washes to paint the mask, starting out light and gradually building it up. I think I went too heavy on the paint job on the final because I really love how much texture just a simple paint job like this shows.
STEP 12
After working on the skin tones, I went in with the darker colors for the ink-blot patterns and eventually decided to try to add a bit of white for highlights on the skin, which I think was a mistake because it makes the skin look powdered.
STEP 13
For the horns, I originally made them out of air-dry clay around an aluminum foil base and shooting for a tree-like texture. Besides being nowhere near light enough, they also started to fall apart shortly after drying.
STEP 14
The second pair of horns I made out of Model Magic were still too heavy to be attached to the head so they had to be cut down drastically. My original design had massive horns but the smaller ones ended up working much better. This is what they looked like before being cut (and also being very dirty from the oil paint on my hands when I was messing with them!)
STEP 15
To attach the mask to my head, I used the adjustment knob shell from a bike helmet and glued it to the inside of the mask so I could have an easy way to secure it to my head. To see out of it, I made sure I cut holes in the tear ducts around the eyes. I painted the holes black to conceal them and was so happy with how the false eyes illusion worked out.
