P1 Jungle Hunter Mask

[Jparr3085]

Greetings all!

 

I wanted to  take a moment and actually put down the beginning to end process I went through recently over the course of a month and a half to create my P1 mask. 

Choosing to sculpt the head out of WED clay, I purchased a 25 lb bag (and toward the end a second 25 lb bag to make sure I had enough) and jumped right in. This was my first project on this scale so I scoured the Lair, other threads, message boards, videos, and anywhere else I could gather information to prepare for the task. I wanted the head to be as accurate to the original as I could, so I tried to find as many images as possible and was fortunate to have some members here provide reference material as well.

As I sculpted, I also worked on the mandibles and teeth separately from the head as those would be ultimately cast in resin, and also made the quills. By the time the sculpt was done I ended up using around probably 35 lbs of WED clay and like 2 lbs of sculpey give or take.

From there it was time to mold. Molding took the better part of an entire day. It was my first time working with hydrocal and so there was definitely plenty to quickly adapt to. I went with a two part mold and was able to get everything done without incident and all the clay cleaned out of the two halves. Now that I had my mold, it was time to cast the teeth and mandibles. 

I sculpted the teeth/mandibles out of sculpey oven bake clay and made silicone molds so I could cast the final resin copies. Half the quills were made out of Bake and Bend sculpey but then I tried Sugru and found I liked that better, so I've been using that for quills since. It's cheaper and you just roll out the shape and let it dry and it remains bendable so it cuts out the baking step, which saved me time. 

Once all those pieces were done, I put my mold together, poured my RD-407 casting latex inside, let it dwell, and then poured it out after its time was up and waited until the next day to fill it with a 2 part soft polyurethane foam since the first one was going to be for display purposes. (The second is a wearable mask that I'll post pictures of also).

Once I had my mask,  I opened the airbrush I bought to try out on this project since I hadn't airbrushed before this, and just got right to it. As one person reminded someone else in the Lair's Facebook chat right before I started the painting portion of this, it was something like "it's only paint, if you fuck up you just paint over it".  So that's what I did.  I painted, and if I did mess up I learned from it and found ways to fix it and knew what not to do the next time to avoid having to redo layers. 

Once all the painting was done and the gloss and sealer were applied, I attached the dreads that had just arrived and voila, one P1 Jungle Hunter mask. Now I finally had my display head!

Then a week later I started half of this process over to make an actual wearable mask for someone else. Fortunately I didn't have to worry about going through the sculpting and molding part again as I now had those and could just cast all the parts and start painting, but this time I made the dread beads myself as well, first out of clay, then molding one and casting if multiple times so I could make 12 additional rings to make a larger mold of those to cut down on how many times I had to cast beads, and then casting them out of resin, priming, painting, and sealing them to add to the dreads. The next part I'm working on and have started making in small batches are my own dreads so I can make every piece by hand, but still has a little time to go on those.

(Photos of the second mask aren't uploading currently)

So that's how I did it. I hope that helps break down some of the process for people looking to just get started. This was my first time doing something like this so if you're hesitant to get started, just remember... you'll never know if you can or not if you don't at least take that first step and try. After all, you may just surprise yourself at what you're capable of.

 

[oooICEMANooo]

This turned out quite amazing; awesome read... Thank you for posting this up.

[Tutank]

Wow that's a great first time on a P1 mask ! Thanks for sharing this.