Dirt & Dirty Teeth

   In last weeks session we was taught of different ways of creating dirt on the skin. The first method we was shown was by using fuller's earth which is a dry material which can be used dry to create the effect of dirt or dust, but if you add a small amount of water to fuller's earth it comes a paste or clay like consistency which can act as mud on the skin. Another good thing about using fuller's earth is that you can colour it, just add a small amount of super colour and your mud will look a lot more realistic compared to the images above.
   We was lastly taught how to colour teeth and make them look rotten or dirty. Start by drying the teeth you're going to colour by wiping a cotton bud over the teeth, also making sure that your model doesn't shut their mouth during this or the drying period of the teeth colouring product. Once teeth are dry, apply colour using a cotton bud wherever you so desire to have the teeth colouring, building up the colour from a light wash to a darker colour will help this look a lot more realistic and leave mouth open to dry. To remove this product still using a cotton bud and a small amount of surgical spirt, rub the teeth until all colour has been removed.  

Practicing My Design

   After deciding my final make-up look, I decided that it would be best to practice my design as if I was to face any difficulty when achieving my final outcome I'd much rather face them now while practicing and be able to fix them. 
   For this practice I decided to just make up the face, but when doing my assessment I will make up every bit of skin that I plan to be on show in the final images. In my previous skin undertone post I decided that I did want my character to have more of an undertone to the skin instead of having a thick or theatrical effect, and I found on my arm a way of achieving this was to use my Kryolan aqua colour palette, however when it came to practicing it on someones face the outcome wasn't quite what I expected. The product wasn't staying on the face and would move previous product on the skin and making my base look very dramatic. After thinking of other ways to apply my off green base I came to the idea of adding foundation to my chosen colour mix which applied so much better compared to the water activated paints before. Sadly, due to the lighting in these images make my model looks very green, however in person it created a very sallow and sickly effect to the skin which is the overall effect I wanted to create for my character.
   Carrying on with working on the skin, on my design I had my character have very tired/black eyes, to achieve this I started off by using my grease paint in yellow and green with a cosmetic sponge that I had taken random chunks out of which create the effect of broken capillaries and a more realistic bruising effect. I then went in and added depth to the bruising with my Kryolan bright eyeshadow palette by using various blues, purples, greens, yellows and pinks to create the tired/bruising effect I want. When doing this, I kept in mind to keep it very controlled and be mindful when placing different shades, I also had a few reference photos of bruises to see the different stages of bruising and what different colours do the different stages of bruising have for me to keep in mind how old or new I want my bruises to be. After I had finished around the eyes I then applied some vaseline around the area to attract light, therefore making that area look more raised and swollen. I didn't just stop at the eyes with this bruising technique, I applied it around my models face in a contouring application which I felt made my character look more beat up, as he was put together so naturally there would be bruising in areas of the body and face. 
   Lastly, I then moved on to creating the huge scar around one side of the face. I started off by laying down a guideline of a red lipliner to show me where the scar will be placed and how it was going to look on my models face, but also to show me where to apply the product as my chosen product to create this indented scar is clear. My chosen material to create this scar was Kryolans collodion, which I found very easy to work with and remove from my model. Out of all of my work so far, creating the scar was by far the most time consuming part of my whole design, this is due to the fact of you have to layer the product on the face or body to create deeper scars and for my design I wanted a very intense scar on the face. After layering the product a few times I started to notice a difference in the skin and saw that the product was working, however I did notice that no matter how much I layered up the collodion it wasn't getting as deep as I would of desired it to be. An idea came to mind to help with the illusion of my scar being deeper than what it is, was to add shadows and highlights to my scar. Adding darker shades of red or my off green mixture to the inside of the scar will help make the scar look a lot deeper, and adding white highlights around the top of the scar on the skin without the collodion will make the shadows pop and look a lot more realistic and raised.
   During my assessment, I plan on doing so much more to this design, such as dirtying up the face and body and adding so much more texture to make my character to look as realistic, yet so unappealing to the viewer. Unfortunately I won't be able to go too overboard when adding texture to my character due to having to recreate my character the next week and make him identical to my first creation, but I will view my added texture in a mindful way and create a controlled manner. I have also thought about adding more scars around the face, some raised and some sunken into the skin, I will experiment with this idea during my second practice for time wise and if it works with my character.

Rick Baker Research

   In a pop culture world bursting with science fiction and fantasy, theres no special effects makeup artist more respected, admired than Rick Baker. From humble beginnings cooking up monster masks in his mother's kitchen, Baker's talent and enthusiasm to make-up and special effects catapulted him from his first Hollywood job as a makeup assistant on "The Exorcist" (1973) to supervising the creation of a bevy of cantina aliens in "Star Wars" (1977) and creating the scariest post-modern wolfman in "An American Werewolf in London" (1981). Thanks in part to his work on Michael Jackson's 1983 music video "Thriller," in which he turned the pop star and his backup performers into the dancing undead. He soon found himself creating creatures for "Harry and the Hendersons" (1987), "Men in Black" (1997) and Tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes" (2001). Baker's career then went into a comedic direction with his work with comedian Eddie Murphy, who he transformed into a bevy of characters, including the portly Sherman Klump in "The Nutty Professor," (1996) and its sequel.

   Baker announced his retirement on May 28, 2015: "First of all, the CG stuff definitely took away the animatronics part of what I do. It's also starting to take away the makeup part. The time is right, I am 64 years old, and the business is crazy right now. I like to do things right, and they wanted cheap and fast. That is not what I want to do, so I just decided it is basically time to get out. I would consider designing and consulting on something, but I don’t think I will have a huge working studio anymore.”

Fever, Sweat & Tears

   This weeks practical session we was taught how to create a fever, sweat and tears using our super colour by Kryolan and glycerin. Whilst working on my partner and looking at my final product I found that when I was applying the redness around the face I was being semi heavy handed, which made the paint show up so much more intense and harsh against the skin. In the future I would make sure I didn't have a lot of product on my sponge, but to also go in with a cotton pad dipped in make up remover to help soften the redness and blend nicely into the skin.

Fever & Fever Eyes Method:

1.  start off by mixing the reds in this palette with some moisturiser to dilute the colour the applied it to the face with a black textured sponge and be very light handed/don't load up the colour onto sponge
2. stipple around the face where you'd get redness e.g. around the cheeks, forehead, nose, neck etc
3. to add more texture get a paint brush and flick colour onto models face
4. make sure edges aren't harsh and are almost translucent
5.  to create fever eyes use red shades from your super colour palette and apply on corners of the eyes and under eye

Sweat & Tears Method:

1. using a black textured sponge dipped in glycerin apply a small amount to the forehead, top of the lip, back of the neck etc
2. for tears apply using cotton bud but do NOT get inside the eye

Continuity And Its Importance In Film

   As for our final project this semester we are being judged on our continuity when we create our monsters/characters, so to put us to the test we was told to create something on our partner whether that be a bruise, black eye, dark lip, or even an eyeshadow look just something small to get us to learn about the importance of continuity especially in film or TV.
   In this lesson I chose to create a bruise of the forearm of my partner by using my aqua colour by Kryolan. I started off by stippling on different colours, layering up as I go along until I had reached my desired intensity of the colours and shape, then wiped it off and repeated my process. As you can see my second attempt at my bruise looks nothing like my first bruise and this is because I won't looking at my original image as much as I should have when recreating this. Hopefully after much practice on my model when it comes to my second final outcome my continuity will have improved quite a bit in that you won't be able to tell the difference between the first and second exam image.

Examples of continuity fails in movies: 

Design Influence: Skin Undertones & Practice

   As for my character I decided to go with more of an undertone of colour rather than a flat, thick layer of paint all over the face and body I thought it would be a good idea to test out colour schemes that I could use for my monster. I thought the most natural way of creating a new undertone to skin and still show skin texture though would be using my aqua colour palette from Kryolan as you can really water down the pigment with these paints creating a kind of water colour wash effect.
   I started off by using the green in this palette and a lot of water and applied it to my skin using cosmetic triangle sponges. I decided to use sponges as it really helps to blend the colour into the skin and not create brush stroke marks which is something you want to avoid when painting a face, arm, body etc. After playing around with the colour by stroking the sponge up and down my arm to remove any unnecessary colour I thought the effect was very realistic, by realistic I mean that you can still see my natural skin texture though the paint and it isn't overly noticeable on the skin.
   My next go at creating undertones I decided to try and achieve a greyish green effect to the skin, I created my colour by using the left over green from the previous application and mixed the slightly amount of black. When applying this onto the skin I noticed that it really clung to hairs and showed a lot of skin texture that I didn't really want to be shown on camera, I also noticed that the colour that I had got wasn't the colour I wanted to achieve in the end result. If I was to ever come back to playing around with colours I would defiantly be looking at mixing white into my mixture and also try and find a solution to unwanted skin texture showing though paint.
   My final colour scheme test I thought mixing the tiniest amount of yellow into my green would create a rather sickly effect which is also something I want to achieve with my monster. After mixing the colours together and applying it to my skin I noticed that this mixture gave a lot of depth to my skin as the green was showing though in a kind of blotchy, bruised way but also defining features like my knuckles which I rather liked the look of.
   In conclusion the my third trial at undertones seems to be a strong candidate for being my overall skin tone for my monster, however I do plan on mixing up more colours before my exam to make sure I get my final and favourite colour combination.

Design Influences: Scars

   Another design influence for my designs has been scars on the face and body, this has been due to again my characters background as he was made from old body parts found in a graveyard so there would naturally be some form of scaring, stitching or cuts on his body and face. I was also very inspired by Rick Baker's bride of Frankenstein to do something like this on the face for my final design and thought to have the placement of one big scar across the face would be a nice twist to his original idea.
   Whilst designing my designs I was torn between making the scars on the face raised or an indent in the skin, but came to the conclusion of having the extremely long and deep scar to be indented into the skin and to possibly have raised smaller scars around the neck or body.