Lifecasting Tutorial: Accucast 590 Face Cast

today we're going to show how to create a face cast using a cue cast 590 alginate to begin we'll need to mask off our subject in this case I'm using my lovely daughter Raya and I'll be masking off with a large trash bag you can also cut up some drop cloth material but just a large disposable bag taped down with some packing tape is a great way to mask off your subject now for release I apply some of our alginate release to her hair and make sure her eyebrows eyelashes any exposed hair is coated with the alginate release now you can also use Vaseline as a release over any exposed hair but you must be very careful as too much Vaseline will cause the alginate to just fall off especially on vertical surfaces to prepare for a face cast we want to prepare our plaster bandages now plaster bandages are very sensitive to moisture so you don't want to prepare these too far in advance I usually get my bandages ready to go about 15 to 20 minutes before my cast now you'll notice there we're layering our bandages up about three layers thick in kind of a zigzag fashion and then I lay them out in roughly the pattern I'm going to use on the subjects face or head now I like to use any leftover pieces off my rolls that are too small for the rest of the face for the bridge of the nose so we're gonna save that piece right there for the bridge of the nose and the other thing we need to prepare in advance is cotton balls cotton or polyester fiber any kind of soft fiber like that will work to help you mechanically lock the alginate to the plaster bandage shell and to do that what I like to do is just unroll a few cotton balls into little strips like this and you'll see that later on when we apply the alginate this is a good video to watch several times so you understand the order of the process and why these preparation steps are so important now for the alginate we're going to use the five ninety a Q cast alginate now a Q cast five ninety is a five-minute working I'm alginate at ninety-degree water temperature if you use colder water it's going to slow it down warmer water speeds it up now for this we're going to use a right around a half a pound of alginate for our face cast now alginate is activated with water so we're going to pour our water into our alginate roughly one part water to one part alginate by volume and I like to mix in a little bit of the water and make it a little bit on the clumpy side and then mix in some more water to break it down and adding the water and a couple of steps there will help you get a really nice smooth consistency now with the clock starts ticking as soon as the water touches the alginate and starts that curing process so you don't want to waste any time with this remember that that five minute working time begins the moment the water touches the alginate so you you want to spend a good 45 seconds to a minute of mixing and then be ready to move on to your face cast if you spend too much time mixing that could be valuable time that's taken away from your application process so you'll notice here we get that little stopwatch running in the corner there that we took right at about a minute to mix that up which of course leaves us with about four minutes of application time and again that's four minutes if we're using ninety degree water temperature anything cooler than that will give us more time warmer water will give us less time so your water temperature is very critical to a good alginate life cast now when you're applying your alginate I always like to apply at the top of the head and work down in that way any of the natural slumping of the alginate will just help you in your work down the face now you'll notice I like my alginate fairly thick you can mix your alginate runny or thick depending on the amount of water you mix into it just the most important thing is that it fits your application style if you do mix it fairly thick it's going to take a little bit more pressure applying it to the face to make sure that you don't get air bubbles trapped on the of the skin now you'll notice here I left her nose for the very last and I'm just gonna use a tiny bit on my fingers to direct that right around her nostrils I never recommend using straws in the nose that can lead to big problems it's much safer to just work right around the nostrils with your finger very carefully and have some q-tips on hand just in case you need to wipe that away but straws in the nose if they're bumped or if anything happens to those straws if they get dislodged if that could ruin a cast not to mention hurt your subject now we're in nearing the end of the work time for the Accu cast 590 and one of the nice physical properties to the 590 is it starts to get slightly gummy at the end of its working time and when it hits that stage you're ready to put down your bucket and grab your cotton balls and press those firmly into the alginate and that takes some timing you take some getting used to that process if this your first go at life casting I recommend that you practice to get the timing right for this particular step because it happens right at the end of the working time of the alginate which again for this particular product is right about four to four and a half minutes into the working time now once the alginate sets up which is pretty much instantly so as soon as it sets up to where to hold that cotton in place you want to tear off any remaining cotton so that you got little fibers sticking out of the surface of the alginate and now it's time to dip your bandages in some clean water and make your plaster bandage shell and I emphasize clean water because you need a good bucket at least one of these two and a half quart buckets or bigger with some clean water now you'll notice as I make the bandages on the perimeter of the face I fold the edge to give us a good clean hard line where the bandage shell is going to terminate into the rest of the life cast and I always work from the top down with very few exceptions and the reason for that is if there's any water running off of the bandages and you always get some little drips of plaster water you want those to run away from your working area you'll find that if the bandages at the bottom of your cast get oversaturated that they'll be very weak and sometimes they won't even set up properly so make sure that you work in a way that eliminates those lower bandages becoming oversaturated with that runoff plaster water now I'm building my shell right around the nose and you'll notice that gap will go back in and fill that in later with that small bandage to bridge that section between the forehead and the lower jaw and just to give that some added strength now once I've worked from the top down with those plaster bandage strips I reinforced the sides with two of the extra bandages I have and again I fold those edges so that again we get a clean line on the side of the face there now all in all this part of the process should be pretty quick shouldn't take you more than about three or four minutes to make a plaster bandage shell over a face like this and now we're down to our final bandage so ready for that little rectangle piece and what I like to do is take that and fold it fold it in half in the middle in that little twist like a bowtie allows it to go right over the bridge of the nose between the nostrils now once your bandage shell is applied usually takes about five to ten minutes for it to gain full strength to where you're able to remove it from your subjects face and for that removal process I recommend that you have your subject take a deep breath in through their nose and blow out gently through their mouth to break the suction on their face cast and if everything is bonded well with the alginate stuck to the plaster bandage shell using your cotton then your alginate should be stuck to the shell pretty good and come off fairly easily and now we have our finished face cast ready for our hydrocal casting and typically start to finish an alginate face cast like this takes right at about twenty minutes sometimes as much as thirty minutes but if it starts taking longer than thirty minute the cast can start to get very uncomfortable for your casting subjects so important to keep that cast moving now ready to fill up our cast with hydrocal but before we can do that we need to stop up those nose holes with some water-based clay here we're using some of our white modeling clay to very carefully plug those nostrils now it's a good idea to smear a small amount on the outside of the cast and then flip over the cast so you can see the inside and make sure that the clay you have applied is not pushing in on the alginate and distorting the shape of the nose now once your clay is where it needs to be you're ready to seal that up with some extra plaster bandage material I take any leftover plaster bandage material wet that with my water and they use that to seal up the nose now again once that bandage material has cured to its full strength in about five or ten minutes there you're ready to cast your hydrocal positive now Riya has a fairly small face so we're gonna start with about 16 ounces of water in our mixing bucket and we're going to carefully sift the hydrocal into the water and if you've watched some of our other videos on hydrocal mixing plaster mixing like this can seem very simple but there's a lot of little nuances to it that you want to be aware of so that you get a good strong end product now what are the important things to remember here if you want to sift your plaster into your water and not disturb the water you don't want to stir it until the water has been completely saturated with the plaster powder so you'll notice here I'm just continually sifting in the hydrocal onto the surface of the water until we hit a point where the water has stopped absorbing the hydrocal and you'll notice when we hit that point here I'm just dusting the top and getting some of those puddles soaked up and now we have our dry lakebed effect when you hit this point you're at that saturation point where the water has absorbed all it can and now you're ready to mix up your plaster now if you wait for about 10 minutes to really let that soak in you'll have a really nice smooth consistency with no little lumps in it so the longer you let that sit up to about 10 minutes gets you a really nice smooth consistency hydrocal product now once we're putting that into our alginate face cast I like to use my hands to wipe it into the mold to make sure I don't have any little air bubbles on the surface you can also use a soft bristle brush for this but since I'm gonna be cleaning my hands anyway my hands I know I can feel if there's any little gaps or any bumps or anything on the surface so it allows me to make sure I work that plaster into all of the inside surface of the mold now after about five minutes the hydrocal mix will start to get a little thicker and at that point you can spoon that in or with your hand and fill up the remainder of the mold and work out any little imperfections on the back of the cast now if you get nothing else from this video understand this plaster will destroy your sinks and destroy your drains so keep a bucket of clean water on hand to wash your hands and your plumbing will be all the better for this step now once you leaned up and you've allowed your cast to sit for about 45 minutes to an hour you're ready to de mold your hydrocal cast now we're gonna carefully work those edges loose to help break the suction on our cast and that we should be able to very carefully peel out our hydrocal face cast now in its early stages a hydrocal cast like this is perfect for reworking sanding removing any of these little air bubbles we have if it gets to its full hardness it will be much tougher to clean up so now is the best time right after it's d molded to do any kind of corrective work on our life cast and now we have a finished hydrocal face ready for some prosthetic work so now we can start working on riah's which nose for Halloween now keep in mind that this videos of one of many we have up on youtube dealing with life casting and life casting is a very intricate process so we recommend that you watch several of our life casting videos before attempting your first live cast and of course all the matte cereals used in our videos are available on our web store at brick in the yard calm

Channel: Brick In The Yard Mold Supply

Views: 10,069,162

Keywords: lifecasting tutorial, lifecasting alginate, accucast alginate, accucast 590 alginate, face cast, face casting process, hydrocal mixing, hydrocal face cast, plaster bandages, Lifecasting, Casting, plaster casting, polytek, mold, casting, silicone, bity, product, supply, rubber, lifecasting, making, resin, gel, props, block, cure, protection, concrete, classes, makeup, skin, finishing, platsil, effects, bronze, brush, tutorial, foam, video, chemical, brickintheyard, application, poly, heads, materials, prosthetics

Id: PDCeyHnCA1o

Length: 13min 33sec (813 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 11 2014