Running Face Prosthetic

First Attempt

In the past i have always has trouble with fibreglass and releasing my moulds, the issue being that the cap plastic encapsulator sticks to the fibreglass core and mould moreso than the silicone. So the piece does not come out of the mould cleanly.

Over the past few months I knew that i would be making more silicone prosthetics in fibreglass moulds so i tried to research a lot of different methods of mould releasing.

There are various other methods, such as using Mac Wax and buffing it off. I have used this method before and it hasn't worked so well with in the past. It also takes a lot longer than some others.

Another method is using fairy liquid, and alloying it to dry between layers. Then casting the silicone, When the silicone is set you then put the mould into a bucket of water to reactivate the fairy liquid. It should then come apart easily. However, oi have seen this method used before, that turned out to be unsucessful. (See below Stuart Bray's Attemot at this method, using pro cap plastic and PS composite platinum pro-gel Silicone.)

The prosthetics event this year took place just before I started moulding this piece. I ran into Alice Kenneth at the event who is now working for Neil Gorton at his studios, and she said when she casts pieces for him, the method she uses is:

1) Apply thick layer of vaseline on both the core and the mould first, and use a hairdryer to

When I spoke to Sammy Gregory about her prefered method, she also said Vaseline was the best that worked for her, and is what they use at Lifecast studios.

So for this mould I used Neil Gortons Methods. See below melting the vaseline in Fig.29.6 and then 2 layers of J-Wax as seen in Fig.29.7.

Mould Release

First Run

Problems

Things that went well

Second Run

Test Paint

Final Paint

Fig. 29.1

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Fig. 29.7

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Fig. 29.35

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Fig. 29.28

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Fig. 29.4

Fig. 29.5

The biggest problem I had to solve with this casting process, is how to get the light on the inside of the silicone.

There were a number of methods that this could be done with.

A) The first one I thought of was to feed the electrical wire through the sculpt, through one of the sculpted veins, but then there would be an issue with the flashing, as it would cause the mould to not close tightly and then the edges would never blend.

B) Secondly I thought a way to get the EL panel into the prosthetic was to mould it with the same size card on the inside where the panel would fit and then once the silicone was set, slice the back open and swap the card for the panel. this way there would be no problem with the wires when casting. However i didnt want to damage the prosthetic.

C) Drill a hole through the core to allow the wire to feed through the back, so that there wouldn't be any disturbance with the edge, and it can be treated like a bleeder during casting and filled with clay.

Which is what I ended up doing, below you can see the hole for the wire, it had to be this size to allow the connector through too.

The key to getting silicone pieces out of fibreglass moulds, according to most industry professionals, is to spray the Cap Plastic encapsulator. If you brush it in then you disturb the mould release and the cap plastic will cling to the fibreglass more so than the silicone. This is especially true if your mould has any air bubbles where the plastic can snag.

Most people use a cheap airbrush to spray in their cap plastic. This causes the encapsualtor to come out in a really fine mist. So on the mould you need to spray about 8 layers, and on the core only 2 or 3.

However this can damage your airbrush and it is really hard to clean out. It is also banned within university. So I bought a cheap spray bottle from boots, and diluted the cap plastic, in the ratio of 4:1 IPA to cap plastic. In previous attempts diluting the cap plastic only 3:1 made the spray bottle clog a bit and the cap plastic came out more as a stream, by adding more IPA it allows the cap plastic to be sprayed as a mist.

It is not quite as fine as a spray as using an airbrush. So for this mould I sprayed 4 layers on the mould and 2 on the core.

The Intrinsic Veining

In the same way as the test pieces i ran, i am also going to use cotton to intrinsically vein this prosthetic.

After the tests, i found the best mix of colour was half the red and half the maroon, and to get the thinnest string as possible, anything larger would look fake.

It has to be taken into account that this increased the casting time considerably. As precision is key, and not disturbing the cap plastic encapsulator is difficult.

Below you can see the final veining before casting the silicone, It was a lot harder to do this into fibreglass than into a silicone mould because of the shiny ness and colour meant it was harder to see. But i tried to mimic the photos from the research i had done, and get the veins primarily in the grooves of the tumours.

1) The prosthetic sliped out of the mould really easily, there was no pull on the mould at all. Which means the mould release worked well, and i will use that method again.

2) The EL Panel Works, there are problems with it that I will address later but the panel is inserted in the silicone and it lights up fine, and gives the glowing outcome I wanted.

3) The colour match. The first half of the silicone (above the El panel) matches the rest of the silicone perfectly.

4) The intrinsic veining looks realistic and hasn't caused any problems with the encapsulator. However i think there should be more.

For the second run I rectified anything that went wrong in the first. Meaning i still:

A) used the same mould release process

B) sprayed in my cap plastic

C) did the same intrinsic veining, but added more thread, and made it look like the veins were coming from the centre outwards.

D) did the same process with the first layer of silicone, waited for it to cure, then add the electrics and injected the rest. Except this time I put the minimum amount of silicone in the mould before. So that the prosthic os only half an inch thick before the panel.

1) The first problem that is evident is that the mould didnt fill. This wasn't from lack of silicone, because there was left over silicone that i was trying to inject. I think that this was because of a blockage in the mould, where the initial silicone was layed in before the El Panel was inserted. I think that too much was inserted and it created a blockage behind the ear.

To rectify this i need to put less silicone in, in the initial section.

Running the Silicone

Degassing the Silicone

To avoid air bubbles in the prosthetic I used the machine shown in Fig. 29.28, the degasser, which eleminates or reduces the risk or air bubbles or trapped air that caused blockages and mistakes in the cast.

Its a quick process and you only need to keep the silicone in there for 30 seconds. But you have to use the maching properly, as it can be dangerous.

2) EDGES! these edges are too thick. the only thing I can do for this is to bolt the mould tighter.

When running silicone, preporation and organisation is key. For this prosthetic I had enough space with everything layed out in the silicone running room in the workshop, and took by silicone matching swatched with me, so that I could match all my silicone to my models complextion.

The Silicone I am using is PS Composites Pro-gel platinum silicone, softened to 80%.

Amount 130 grams.

To get the EL Panel in the prosthetic i poured some silicone into the ear part and where i wanted to put the panel. Approximately 1 inch thick. as seen in Fig. 29.14 and Fig. 29.15.

I waited for this to cure and then put the panel in, closed and bolted the mould and injected the rest of the silicone into the mould.

The wire fits through the back of th core and is covered when it starts to bleed. as can be seen in Fig. 29.17.

For the final prosthetic, I wanted to paint as much as I could to cut down application time. But I want the prosthetic to blend into the skin as much as possible, so i think this will be best to do on application. So i can match his freckles and the colour correctly.

For this final paint i used the same technique as the test, using alcohol based paints, but just lightly, to paint in the shadows and the soreness. But i left the veins to paint on the day because i dont think i can match the colour off the face and also i want to continue them onto the skin, because it doesnt take long it wont affect the application time too much.

3) The EL Panel . There are a couple of things i don't like about this. The first being the shape of the light. Although before I tried to light it up like a shape of a phone, with the screen and the keys, However i dont think this works, because it hides the details of the sculpt, especially in the keypad, and therefore it doesn't look realistic at all.

There is also a problem with the top of it where the acetate is laid over the screen, which isn't sucessful at all, you can not see the code, and it makes the light less bright.

To rectify these problems, I will cut the EL Panel down more so it is just the screen and I will remove the acetate.

To help tighten the edges around the mould, I used washers to have a greater surface pull on the mould.

For this test paint I used a variety of alcohol based paints from the Krystian Mallett coloured illustrator.

I used this palette because of the skin colours in the palette and the subtle vein and blood vessel tones; "Dusty Rose" and "Rose adjuster", that my makeup requires.

I decided to use alcohol based paints because they are transluscent and subtle, but with care as i did not want to destroy the encapsulator.

For this test i used marroons and reds to copy the photoshop design from the test designs.

I think it was pretty sucsessful test, i like all these colours, except i went too far with it, as you can see in Fig. 29.35 it is too over the top.

I much prefer the colouring in Fig. 29.36, where its just outlining the detail of the keys and ear with blood colours and going over the vein colours.

Outcome

The second run of the silicone came out so much better that the first;

Again the 2 silicones match in colour, although it may be a little pale, i would prefer it to me more translucent than opaque.
This piece also filled the mould well, there are no big problems, or airbubbles in the prosthetic and the flashing filled all the way round.
The EL Panel in the prosthetic also worked so much better in this piece than the last, i much prefer the shape of it like this and it is also a lot brighter and more obvious in this cast.

Fig. 29.29

EDGES

I really think that the edges on this piece are some of the best i have accomplished from any close mould prosthetic, there is almost no silicone through the edges and they are thin edges all the way around the piece, and i hope that with good application i can get a nice blend into the skin. Because of this it is coming apart at the flashing quite easily. I think for the application i will remove the flashing first.

Fig. 29.31