For those following my blog you may have already read the interview I had with Mark who was talking about his experiences at the London Film and Comic Con, dressed as Klytus. If you remember, he had mentioned a product that he had used to make his Klytus arm braces out of.
I looked into this Worbla material because I was really curious. The experience totally gave me a flash back. Worbla is indeed a thermoplastic. It becomes really playable when heated. When it cools, it becomes ridged again however remains in what ever shape you've put it in beforehand. I had no idea you can acquire this stuff in such large sheets now.
When I was a "youngster" back in the early to mid nineties, I remember a new product showing up in the craft/hobby shops called, Friendly Plastic. They were small strips of black plastic about 3cm wide by 25cm long. One side of the strips had a metallic finish to it and there were a number of different finishes to choose from. This product was also a thermoplastic. It was intended for the jewellery making hobbyists.To shape it, you had to leave it in boiling hot water for a while until it became pliable enough to work with.
Back in the day, I'd bought a few of these strips to experiment with. I wanted to try to make myself a cool Terminator mask because of their metallic chrome finish.
I remember taking a mould of the front of my head and loosing part of my sideburn when I tried to take that plaster bandage mould off again. To this day, that bit of hair still hasn't grown back. ;-)
On top of a plaster cast of my face, that I was now able to produce thanks to that plaster bandage mould, I sculpted a Terminator mask using some clay. Another plaster mould had to be taken of my finished clay sculpt. Only when this second plaster mould had dried out completely, could I start using these Friendly Plastic strips as I'd initially intended. Once these strips had been softened in hot water they were pushed inside the second plaster mould - chrome side facing down. When this thermoplastic had cooled the strips had fused together forming a large solid moulded plastic terminator skull shape, which now also fitted perfectly over my face. It was pretty cool! The chrome finish on the outside worked out quite well too. I didn't even need to use primer or spay paint on it. If memory serves, I think I put a black acrylic wash over the whole thing to help bring out some of the sculpted details. This technique always helps to give the illusion of depth, like in the eye socket for example.
Small holes were drilled all around the outer edge. The solid plastic mask was put back into the mould again so that some latex could be drizzled around it's outer edges to form that torn skin detail. The latex poured through the drilled holes into the moulded edge details and when cured formed a solid 'stiched' bond between the front and back of the plastic mask. This also created a nice soft latex edge to help blend the finished mask into my own skin. I even remember adding a red LED light for the eye too. I looked totally bad arse that Halloween ;-)
Worth thinking about...
Some useful links;
• Friendly Plastic is available online through Amazon
• Polymorph is available online through ebay
• Zotefoam or 'Craft foam' (same stuff) - http://www.zotefoams.com
• Paper and Cardboard are available - ANYWHERE,
and often for free too if you know where to look ;-)
