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(A personal project).

Old age sculpture.

"A few years back, I decided to produce a prosthetic depicting extreme old age. At the time I did not have enough experience with using foam rubber, so I was limited to cold curing methods such as slush molding pre-vulcanised latex etc. I was also still relying on oil based clays for my modelling.  What a terrible combination!".

 

Close up of 'unique' crackling effect. A lesson:  Following a lifecasting session, we ended up with a plaster positive of my face, which I intended to use to try out my sculpting skills to produce some extreme old age make-up SFX.
Since I knew that I may need a little time to experiment with producing convincing wrinkles and sags, I opted not to use wet clay, and instead ended up using an oil based clay.

This was a mistake for two reasons:

    1) Oil rots latex.

    2) Latex practically desiccates oil based clay!

I recall been extremely unhappy with the results (at first); but consoled myself with the fact that I had, at least, discovered a quick and reproducible crackling effect for the future.
Filled now, with a sense of adventure and discovery, I decided to experiment further -with less optimistic results this time.

Since I was not going to use foam latex, this eliminated the need to have a plaster negative.  I could use latex to create my mould.
This would be slow work involving apling a layer of liquid latex, followed by drying.   To speed this up, and to add streingth to the mould, I had used bathroom tisue, but for some reason which now escapes me, I decided that using newspaper may work better this time -it of course did not!

Side view of old age sculpture.

Latex / newspaper negative.

I guess that I must have figured that by permeating the latex mould with ordinary newspaper I could (not only) save on chemical resources, but more importantly create a ridged Endo-scaffolding that would retain the original shape of the sculpture.  Neither occurred! Instead, the newspaper absorbed the water content of the liquid latex and caused the cast to buckle and rouche.  These was no saving this project.
Still I really did like that cracking effect -albeit unpredictable; sometimes that can be nice.

 

©   S y l a k    S p e c i a l   E f f e c t s

Sculptor/model maker: Sylak  -   Artist/painter: Nicky

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