Ears:
Core, Sculpting, Moulding
Wearing gloves and a respirator in an open space, I mixed up fast cast resin and poured inti my silicone mould. The WED clay wall was built high enough to give me a thicker base for me to work on. This also made the ears less fragile and fiddly, and will enable easier moulding once my ears are sculpted.
Referring back to the Egghead Fx video, my grounding up is very similar. I originally assumed that I would have to build up behind the ear to reduce the under cut, this was then confirmed once I had discovered the video on youtube. It was difficult to puth clay behind the ear as it was such a tight space. However I managed to do this, but it took longer than expected.
Once ready for moulding, i make a wall from plastic cups and sealed them with tape to avoid and leaks. I then released the sculpt, grounding and inside of the cup with a combination of Vaseline and Macwax.
Using 3481 silicone, I mixed up 400g and poured this directly into moulds.
Sculpting
Core
Grounding up & Moulding
Stuart Bray (2015).
Jensen, T. (2015)
Using a coarse sandpaper, i sanded down the edges of my cores to make them neater and nicer to handle.
Escape ports - ground all way around with keys, build wall .
Using a Staffordshire bullterriers ear as reference as they stick up in an appropriate position, I sculpted ear tips onto the cores. I tried to replicate the smooth skin of a dogs ear but still considered the human ear whilst doing so. I addes pores and creases in the ears to give a more realistic representation. Dogs ears have intricate creases and often almost a double layer, I considered this but thought it would be too far into the transofrmation if I did this.
Once demoulded, I cleaned the clay off the ears, and released both my core and mould ready to run gelatine in for a test. I can then check thath they work properly, then do this again using pigment to match my makeup. I will then use these test ears to hairpunch and flock like I intend to for the makeup. This is shown in my designs.
The gelatine ears came out perfectly, with thin blending edges around the appliance and a clean grounding area to peel away from. I was pleased with these ears so I proceeded in trying to colour them to the specified cold blue/ purple tone in my designs.
Using oil paints, I mixed ina tiny amount of both red and blue to give a purple colour to the ear. I was happy witht he outcome as I felt the colour was appropraite and am now considering these pieces for practice makeup. Next I will flock and hair punch this ear to see how the design comes together. I will then try this appliance in silicone and possibly foam.
Using the same hair I used for knotting and hair work, I decided to punch the ends of the ears with a mixture or black and silver hair. The silves isnt really visible in this picture.
As I wanted the hair to sit in a point, I tried to punch as flat as I could on either side of the tip. Usting thread, I tied a knot around the hair, and using heat set the hair in this position. I found that this was a successful experiment and I will continue to use this unless I discover a better method. Alternatively I could consider texturing the hair before hand, using longer strands of hair to make it easier to punch. Then I would cut the hair down like I did in the images above.
Hair:
Hair Punching & Flocking
