Gelatin Head Appliance - First one done!

This was perhaps the biggest challenge yet on this project. Since none of us really have any experience building prosthetics, it was an incredible learning experience. It involved building the cast with plaster, connecting a 5' PVC tube to it and then mixing/cooking the gelatin, pouring it to create the cast.

This is what the gelatin appliance looks like.

And here is an interesting arrangement we used to pour the gelatin and erect the cast. With nothing more than random found objects in my apartment. Epic indeed t'was!

What you see there is a Styrofoam head with a tube drilled into. Dunked into a plaster cast in the blue bucket. Fitted into another PVC tube. Standing upright using a crutch!

Gelatin Head Appliance

We experimented with casting appliance in Gelatin using plaster and it turned out to be a very successful. The gelatin works very well on skin and has organic sub-surface scattering properties. Will post pictures of the gelatin soon.

So the next is to build the actual cast for the head and make the gelatin parts. Here you can see the Styrofoam head with the clay added to create the positive for the mold.

The idea is to use a 5' PVC pipe to cast a solid gelatin tube with the bald cap at the base of it. Then apply this appliance over a latex bald cap and then blend the edges with more liquid latex.

DIY Bald Cap

Logan Kelly, our make-up artist found this video, and plans to build the bald caps for us.

Body Paint Test

After much testing, we found that the Palmer body paint works best under our lighting setup. An even mix of about 1:1 paint and water applied with an air-brush, creates a nice, clear, uniform wash on the skin. It hides the skin enough to cover up all the specular highlights, but it is transparent enough to let the muscle, veins and skin texture show up through it.

In the images you cans see the red-tempura paint applied on the left side and the white body-paint on the right side. Clearly the white color responds better to the light and creates a soft diffuse surface.

We've ordered the same paint product from another brand -- Kryolan's which is a bit cheaper. The paints should be here early next week.

Bald Cap

One thing we realized in the tests was that even if we got naked models with body paint, the bald caps would never look realistic. After much debate, I decided carefully to alter the design of the character so that it would be more practical. Here's what i came up with. It's a sort of a lotus bud like formation from the top. We could do this with a bald cap, a swim capo and a funnel-tube and some plasticine or some kind of polymer based molding/modeling material.