I kept writing “I’ll tell you all how I did this effect in a later post” and never got back to you on that. So here we go.
One major point for all of these effects before we get started; I didn’t need perfect, I just needed close enough. Any mistakes in production I could hide with setup or processing. If you plan to make any of these effects for costumes that you will display live, you likely won’t have the leisure of shot framing and processing to hide mistakes that I did for photography. Keep that in mind as you go over this.
For the fake eyeballs, check out these YouTube videos:
EASY DIY Realistic Resin Eyes by Monster Tutorials
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOIWkK0-7PY
Note: I purchased the exact stuff he recommends at Michaels, but I suspect Hobby Lobby has it as well – Michaels was just closer to the location I was making them. I skipped the yellowing part. I did experience failures and do expect to make a few attempts before you see success. The good news is, once you get the mold worked out mistakes aren’t as much trouble since you can just make more eyes to attempt things.
Even then, my end products didn’t come out as good as his, but it didn’t matter for my photoshoot as the eyes were small and you never really got a close look at them.
Also, I had to try 4 different printers before I found one that worked with his technique so keep that in mind.
Bonus tip on the eyes postproduction: I discovered fake severed eyes put on a small plate and strategically placed in certain rooms seems to keep people out of places you don’t want them to go.
How to create a fake eye by ellimacs sfx makeup
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48zY3p_-i88
Note: I didn’t really use this one so much as got inspired by it. I glued yarn on the little stub on the back of the eyes created in the first video to make those thick veins or whatever coming from the eye and sort of did my own spin on it by drenching them in fake blood.
For dissolving mouth:
I think I wrote it in the post but for review, the glowing orb was stupid easy. I just got a crystal ball and placed directly between a speedlight and my camera and voila – glowing orb of mystery.
For the dissolving mouth, I melted some monster clay, let it dry, and painted layers of liquid latex on it. Liquid latex needs to air dry, so I recommend a hairdryer with a cool air button to speed things along. DO NOT PAINT LIQUID LATEX OVER A NOT TOTALLY DRY LAYER or you will have a bad day when you go to peel it and liquid latex spills all over. Speaking of peeling, make sure you have a brush and baby powder to brush on to the dried latex skin as you peel it up or it will stick to itself. After that my sfx assistant applied it to my face and applied makeup to match it. I also did some processing work on it as well.
For the pupil-less face peeling monstrosity character:
I can’t recall which video I used but I did look up a video on how to remove pupils using adobe photoshop. There are lots of them out there so you shouldn’t have a problem finding one.
The other effects were a mix of the fake skin we made for the dissolving mouth, except now on a paper plate rather than on monster clay, and making a bizarre shaped object out of monster clay and molding it as we did with the fake eyes. My sfx assistant painted the prosthetic and applied it to her face using liquid latex as glue which worked just okay, but I do wish we had more time at the time to research stronger methods of sticking it to her face.
Finally, for the cannibal, or should I say the ear.
I watched every video I came across on youtube that I could find for making ear molds. This was tricky as a lot of videos focused on inside the ear for headphones and for hearing aids. You want to make the mold out of alginate which means you will be very limited on the number of times you can cast with it. Also keep in mind, I kind of cheated. The person who’s ear I was making a mold of hears with a cochlear implant and no longer has an ear canal on the ear I was molding making the stakes much lower for potential damage.
When I went to cast with the alginate mold, I added mica powder to get the cast to match my model’s skin tone. I did not use remotely enough mica powder and this resulted in a pink ear so I painted it close to his skin tone.
The cast itself didn’t turn out that great and looked gnarly, but that was okay because I needed the ear to look like a cannibal had just cut it off so gnarly worked for this project. Furthermore, any major mistakes I could hide with fake blood.
And that’s all my notes. If you attempt any of these, give yourself leeway for mistakes and learning, especially if you are going for a live costume and not a photo session.
Also, the included photos are outtakes from some of the projects of a certain toddler peaking around. She hated the eyes, she hated the mouth, she hated the face peeling, but oddly enough she was intrigued by the cannibal. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.