The
Cement Positive - Now that we had a plaster negative of a face with the
character mask on, we needed to make a cement positive. The reason
for cement is that it's stronger then plaster, and this is the final piece
we would use to mold the leather mask itself.
Just for the sake of ease, we placed the negative into a flower pot
full of dirt to hold in place, then filled the mold with post cement (the
kind of stuff you use when you're setting fence posts and such). Nesteled
into the back of the cement are a couple of pieces of wood. This
is to give us a place to tack the leather to the positive while we are
shaping it into the face.
Cracking
the Cement Postive Out - Once the cement had set, we had to remove it from
the plaster. At this point, there isn't any real easy way to do this.
You really just have to take a hammer and chisel to the plaster negative.
Fortunately we still had the original life mask intact so that if we
made a mistake here, we'd be able to rebuild. Even more fortunately,
we didn't have to do that.
The
Cement Positive - This is what all that trouble has been for. Now
that we have the cement positive, we can shape the leather to it in order
to make the actual leather mask. It's not completely clear here just
how detailed the cement is, but the mask shape is very clear on it, and
since it was built to the actors face, it means that it will fit them perfectly
and comfortably.
That makes for a much happier actor. <G>