January 30th, 2017
We’re very excited to be able to share with you the latest in our How To: series, this time from Manchester-based prosthetics and SFX specialist, Shaune Harrison. From Harry Potter to Star Wars – Episode 1 The Phantom Menace and Game of Thrones, his work has graced countless movie and TV shows. Check out his website for more fascinating tutorials and for details of courses at the Shaune Harrison Academy
Prompted by watching the classic Steve McQueen movie, Papillon, Shaune wanted to revisit an effect on one of the lead characters who has Leprosy – and makes use of a most unusual prop, illustrating that thinking outside of the box is always a good thing. Shaune takes up the story.
I became interested in trying this when working with students on my 5 day Master Class at the Shaune Harrison Academy and arrived at the workshops with a selection of poppadoms and explained to the students what I was going to do with them.
First I lifecast my performer in Silicone and produced a Plaster head to be sculpted onto. Next I moulded a selection of poppadoms in PS Composites PS-28 moulding silicone, peeled the silicone off them, then I scraped melted down Monster Clay all over the moulds. After this I peeled off the dried Monster Clay from the silicone and gently pressed them down onto the lifecast, and with a bit of sculpting and tweaking, I managed to finish off the head piece over the next few hours.
Moulding poppadoms
Place poppadom piece onto lifecast
Next the head was floated in water and on the following day I removed the sculpt gently from the lifecast. The forehead and cheek pieces were laid down gently onto a white Conti board and finished off with the detail and blending. I wanted to place the nose piece onto a core of the performer’s nose, so I produced a SG-700 epoxy core from the original Silicone life cast mould. I deliberately used Life Casting Silicone so I could produce numerous cores out of the same mould. I gently placed the Nose sculpt onto the Epoxy core and finished the piece off.
Silicone moulds
I moulded the Flat pieces in T-13 from PS Composites and then moulded the nose piece.
Coloured pieces
I ran all the pieces in Pro-Gel 10 from PS Composites and softened them to 80%.
On the day of the lifecast, I applied all the pieces and painted them with PPI Skin Illustrator palettes.
The application time took just over 2 hours.
It’s great to try out these methods of moulding food, as the results are quite interesting. Next time you’re walking down the food isle in your local supermarket, check out the fruit and veg section – things may jump out at you with textures…
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