LATEX MASK MAKING TALK THROUGH

it's youtube wednesday [Music] this video uh is kind of an answer to a lot of the questions that i get uh on my channel i do set design i do costuming i do puppet making i do mask making and i get a lot of questions on mask making and i can say that i've done a video on every single aspect of mask making and there are other videos out there there's a lovely um like two hour long series by distortions on making latex masks this is the conversation party version i'm going to talk you through the whole process at one time in one video hopefully your attention span can bear it and you can take 10 minutes to learn about the whole process and i explain each step so the first thing that you need to do to make a latex mask and i'm talking about a latex half mask because there's a lot of different types of masks and you can make this very complicated but you don't have to i always tell people to start by making a latex half mask i just did a video on making and this is a sculpting form i just did a video on making a plaster bust it's that guy right back there you can make one of these the exact same way just cut the back end of your styrofoam head off and then plaster over that so you can make this on your own you don't have to buy it from me at stillpstudios.com but you can if you want to so once you have this then you sculpt your mask on top of it you can use oil-based clay or you can use water-based clay what i normally use is water-based clay because it's nice and squishy and i'm working in a shop water-based clay is dirt and water it's water-based all right it's mud and as it dries it gets dust everywhere if you're working in your kitchen use monster clay which is an oil-based clay uh if you are working in your garage or a shed or something then maybe go with water-based because i think it's a it's certainly a more forgiving material as far as sculpting goes so there's water-based clay and there's oil-based clay you have to make that choice mostly it's made for people by the amount of mess so you do your sculpture on top of your head form don't let any of this be uh exposed because you don't want any if it's plaster you don't want it to stick to the mold all right i have a whole video on plasters and i have lots of videos on how to make a mold but basically once you have your sculpture done in clay then you're going to paint over that and then form over that plaster there are several kinds you can use you can use uh us number one pottery plaster you can use hydrocal you can use ultra cal 30. those are the only three i recommend if you freaking message me and say i made a mold just like you said and it didn't work and i what kind of plaster did you use and you answer mortar mix one more freaking time i'm not gonna help you i can't help you those three ultracal30 hydrocal us number one pottery plaster that's it so when you make a mold over a half mask form like this it's going to look something like this once that's made all right then you're going to have to remove the sculpting form from it these guys have a handle on the back but you might have to kind of pry it out with with screwdrivers you just have to get it out that's engineering you figure that out i always make my molds a little bit flat so that i can pour them up after you get the head form out that's going to be full of clay because that's your sculpture so the inside of your mold looks like the inside of your mold looks like your sculpture you have made a highly decorative interior of a stone bucket that's what you made so this happens to be mumbra that i finished recently and once your clay is out all right once your clay is cleaned out i normally use a power washer to clean most of the clay out i hand pick almost all the clay out and then i clean it with the power washer i don't like to do that with us number one pottery plaster because it's you can mar it uh the power washer will actually cut into the stone because that's a very soft stone it's okay you're not going to get as many pulls out of it it's not as strong because of the process of erosion so you now have this and you want to make a mask out of your plaster mold then you fill this mold with latex there are several methods i'm telling you the one that i use if you do it different than me i can't help you when you have problems maybe i can but i'm a lot less likely to so i pour in a little bit of latex casting latex or mask making latex not makeup liquid latex you don't want to use that mask making latex or casting latex pour in a little bit and paint in all the features what you're trying to fight is air bubbles you might have teeth that are real long and pointy you're gonna have to poke down into those teeth to make sure the latex gets all the way down in there or else an air bubble will get could get stuck think of a glass in a think of a glass in the sink when you're washing dishes and you push it down to the bottom with the open end facing down and there's still air in there and you have to turn it on its side to get the air out so that's another method you might have air trapped in the tips of your ears then you have to tilt the mold a little bit and allow that air bubble to move up and out you have to think about the negative space of your mold where will the air get trapped and work for that not to happen there are some masks that i have to pour at an angle and then keep pouring and keep changing the angle in order to not trap air that's something you have to work through kind of on each skull what kind of latex do i recommend i get my latex from three places right now all right i get my latex from bitty mold supply because they are close to me they're local to me and i don't pay any shipping so i can drive there i can pick it up so that's latex that i like to use in general casting latex is casting latex there are some differences um i have also lately been ordering from this company here which is black lagoon supply and i order from black lagoon supply on occasion their latex is thicker than bitty mold supplies latex it's very creamy it's a thicker creamier latex now there's nothing wrong with that it is a little harder to get it down in those in those really pointy teeth in those big ear tips it's a little tougher but for my open moulds like a skull mold or something this is actually a little faster because it's so thick it leaves a thick coating almost even with the pour in pour out the third plates that i get latex from is fry props freight props uh they're out of st louis uh so big old supply is in texas freight props is in st louis i don't remember where black lagoon supply company is from but i'll put it in the video and when you when you pour up your mold you pour it a little bit you paint it in to make sure that you don't have any air bubbles and then you pour it up the rest of the way making sure you don't have any air bubbles possibly tilting it and you let it sit the longer you let it sit the thicker your mask is going to be that's the control of thickness that you have how masks happen is you have poured latex into the plaster mold the plaster is thirsty it is sucking the moisture out of the latex that is touching the end touching the mold that's why you bother to make the inside of the plaster bucket decorative in the way that you want it it is sucking that moisture out so then when you you allow it to go a certain amount of time if it only sits for 10 minutes it's only going to suck out so much moisture if it sits for two hours then it's going to suck out more moisture i recommend a two hour dwell almost in every scenario that's going to be a nice thick mask if you want it thinner go less if you want it thicker than that then you can leave it longer at some point there's a point of diminishing returns where there's only dry latex up against the plaster so it's not going to get any more moisture out i think that's about the six to eight hour mark but i haven't really tested that theory too much know this u.s number one pottery plaster if you have a mold made out of that and a mold made out of cow and a mold made out of hydrocal the pottery plaster will be the thickest in the same amount of time the hydrocal will be in the middle and the altar cal will be the thinnest mask even if you dwell for two hours at the same time same temperature save everything because the ultra cow is more dense so it's going to draw that water through slower the usd one pottery plaster is the most porous so that water can move through it very fast so those are the factors to consider when you are pouring up at the end of your two hours your timer goes off then you will very carefully pour out this latex you will pour this latex out this is a bowl full of latex you'll pour it back into the five gallon bucket you'll pour it back into the five gallon bucket in here is very wet and very fragile don't touch that don't mess with that pour your latex back in all right let it drain let it drain either on its end i normally drain so that it all collects in the forehead and then pours out of the mold if you're sitting at the drain like this you're going to have a puddle in your forehead if you drain from this way your chin normally dips down a little bit you're going to have a thick chin so drain it either straight up and down and a little bit cocked forward so it all comes out of the forehead but then you have to wash your ears because your ear tips often go up and it's going to pull somewhere drain it for about 10 minutes you may have to tilt it a different way to drain something else for another 10 minutes latex moves slow it's a thick liquid so move it and let it drain again for 10 minutes it's sitting on top of this bucket it's draining into that bucket then carefully because this latex might stick to the bucket you're going to be very careful when you pull it apart you have a wet gross fragile mask in here you have to let that set out that is now going to dry or pure uh in the air in the sun whatever give it 12 hours here in texas with a fan on it out of the texas summer heat i could pull a mask out of here in about four hours uh if you are in oregon you will not be able to pull a mask out in four hours you might have to wait 16. it all depends on your humidity your temperature cold weather slows the process way down so that's something to consider but let's just say you waited 12 hours there's a fan on it this latex will be very white when it's wet you come back and it's going to look yellow that means it has kind of cured it is darker than it was when it was wet you cannot just pull this out of here you have to get baby powder or corn starch or cornstarch baby powder i think ed edmonds at distortions uses plaster dust because he has plaster around and you can just i use a one-inch chip brush and one of these guys this one has some stain on it but a one inch wooden handle chip brush and i brush that baby powder around inside of here because latex will stick to itself if you don't do that if you don't get that baby powder down into the ears and into those long teeth then that latex could collapse and stick to itself and then that ear will look flat deflated and funky and you don't want that so once you have done that then you're going to pull out the mask you'll whatever way it's in there you have to pull opposite you got to pull the ears out this way you gotta pull the eyelids around you have to be very careful you don't want to break the stone the rubber is strong enough to break the stone the thicker the mask is the more wear and tear it's going to put on the mold once you peel it out then you have what we call a blank this is a blank witch mask you can see that there's some flashing on it you can see that the eyes are not cut out and the mouth isn't cut out you're going to cut off all the excess and you're going to cut out your eye holes your nose holes your mouth holes and the more you thought about that while you were sculpting the easier that's going to be i always delineate a nice hard line of exactly where i'm going to cut out those eyes the mouth i normally make it pretty clear where it needs to be cut out you have it trimmed then you're going to have a piece like this which is your your cut mask this is my led skull uh these happen to be sockets for leds oh i know that looks a little weird but that's what this piece is this is this is a trimmed mat it's a trimmed blank i haven't painted it yet i haven't strapped it yet i will uh use pop rivets and i put two elastic straps on mine two elastic straps that are three quarters of an inch thick and i cut those pieces 11 inches long to go around people's heads and then i put them in about an inch in all right i used to use velcro now i use elastic i just think it's more comfortable but how you strap it is up to you you have to find a way to make it fit on someone's head could be a sock mask it could be whatever but at this point is when you kind of want to strap it all right so that is that then you're going to paint it this is a werewolf mask that i have painted this was a blank i base it in black i dry brush it this is not a painting tutorial i'm explaining you the whole process and i use you have to use a paint that's stretches and that flexes um if you paint it with acrylic see how that even shows the latex through but it doesn't flake off it doesn't break off because this latex this paint has a lot of stretch in it this paint is one-third casting latex the same stuff we poured the mask up with one-third distilled water and one-third latex house paint from home depot i'm not kidding get indoor paint and indoor flat is what i get so that that's the paint recipe one third one third one third that is what this was painted with that's the easy way are there nuances can you go in with alcohol inks afterwards yes you can but let's get through the whole process [Music] today [Music] now this doesn't look much like a werewolf or a wolf van because there's no hair on it but i haven't worried about hair this whole process you might have something that gets horns and then gets hair and whatnot and you might want to do that after instead of how funny would this mold look and how heavy would it be if i molded giant horns on this i like to put them on after that's just me this mask is from a company called zagone studios and this is a man wolf mask and here you can see that they have put hair on it and now that looks a lot more like a werewolf you know that is a means to an end now these guys they use the fur as as the strap this is the strap so that pattern is the right size for someone to put this on and it holds on to your head all right so that's how these guys do it but that is part of finishing your mask you can go as simple as maybe it's a zombie and it gets nothing and your mask is done maybe it's a skull and you wear it with a hood that's fine maybe you want to go a little bit fancier this is a mask this is a latex mask with a fur cowl hood on it attached to it it has an acrylic eye in it it has i didn't even cast the ears on this these ears are eva foam the horns are eva foam and they're added on with contact cement but you can make some killer stuff this way it's all part of the process but that's the whole process the whole process of making a latex half mask i have just explained in this one video in 20 minutes go make stuff oh excuse me

Channel: StiltbeastStudios

Views: 14,639

Keywords: Allen, Hopps, Halloween, Haunted house, prop, DIY, scary, stiltbeast, haunted attraction, Halloween Mask, mask making, latex mask, how to make a mask, mask maker, halloween masks, monster lab, latex mask tutorial

Id: 2KOR5CvsAwI

Length: 20min 57sec (1257 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 05 2020