I think I’m a a banana tree! Liara half pulled off but good view of the extreme use of paint shading.
You can see the seam line here, but I don’t shoop, never will unless it’s a camera issue (lighting, foreshortening etc).
Why is my chin so pointy! Lots of pink to shape the eyes and nose. pink over white for the eyes and a tiny bit of white down the nose, pink in the curves
how I keep my powders now. Much easier to find the right shade vs in regular eyeshadow palettes.
A travel kit for Liara. Latex, PA and paints to shade the appliance and face.

I do goof around a lot…

Alcohol Activated Paints

I kind of leapt right into here after playing with a little Aquacolour and Snazaroo. Both are fine, and in many ways are easier to apply and blend. However I wanted to paint my whole body red. Red in particular transfers badly in body paint. Really really really badly. No matter how well sealed and set. I found this even with PAX (might be because I did insist on added pure pigment powder and not mixing it fully…)

These have a bit of a reputation for being harder to use, but they aren’t 🙂 So long as you know a few tricks, as with everything 🙂

Prep:

First, they are solvent in alcohol (ethanol and Isopropyl Alcohol) but also in the industry standard cleaner Isopropyl Myristate. Which is super expensive in NZ. So it means once dry they are set. You would think this is all kinds of bad for tidy up but it’s not.

I set my work area up with my towels and plastic containers and plastic bags so I can just dump everything in my makup up kit at the end happy to wipe down the surfaces with rubbing alcohol and knowing it won’t keep transfering from cloth to surface to cloth like you get with a wet face cloth. or wastes paper towels. And knowing that the paint on the outside of my bottles/pots/pallets can be cleaned off later but won’t damage my kit.

Types:

There are several brands to use. The ones I use are:
NZ Airbrush Tatoos Mostly for my white based paints. So for Liara and Rachi. It’s a good product, with amazingly fast response from the owners and they pack the bottles nicely. And cost effectively. Also on TradeMe and I may use their auctions next time so I can leave feedback :)These are in liquid form, ready to airbrush. It’s fairly thin so you do need to evaporate off some of the liquid if you want to paint/sponge on.

Reel Creations  I live overseas so can’t buy their paints easily, but the liquid form is apparently already mixed to use in airbrushes as well. I buy their Large Color Pots as they are totally evaporated and so don’t pose a risk to shipping by air. Oh heck, I worked out how much they cost in NZ dollars. But it’s about $24 each including shipping? But one pot of red lasted multiple applications for Darth Talon including the lekku.

harder to remove than the above but still needs hot water and soap at least. IM is best and IA works. Just avoid the face.

Latonas which seems to have changed their bottles and maybe formulation? This is close to PAX as you can get without being PAX. It is/was half diluted, so you need to thin it for airbrush but works well as is to sponge on appliances. It is super durable. I did my underarms and butt/thighs as Talon and I looked like I had red boy shorts on the entire time at C6 and some way in to D*C. Even with IM to remove it.

Storage:

In all cases I prefer to pour them out into a flat container and evaporate them off so I can use them like a mix between cake make up and watercolour. But using alcohol vs water 😉

Colour mixing:

I like to buy the red as is as well as the black in all the above and use as is- my lekku are tinted vaguely transluscent within my own skin shades so it refracts light in a similar way to my skin. It’s not perfect but the red is slightly transluscent so is better than not.

I do however buy a lot of white and mix to make the Asari blues and pastel to mid tone shades where possible. This is because I can then be sure they are all equally opaque (some inks are opaque some are transluscent) and equally mixable in to each other.

To do this I have pure pigment from the art store. The skull and bones on the bottles is not because the product is toxic but is so finely milled you do not want to breathe it in! So I get my dust mask, and spriitz the top of the bottle with alcohol to keep stray particles from being breathed in and mix directly in my bottles/containers.

I use a col blue and warm blue, opaque yellow and a “red” that is actually pink and a true red. And also Titanium white as it is a base for cosmetics.

I check my mixes regularly and give a stir every so often after mixing and during the evaporation process as the colour pigments rise and the white/fillers sink. This is also why the paints can look darker once dry than in the bottle/pot.

I also mix street shadow with these pigments to intensify them as you need strong colours to shade with.

To use:

First prep the skin:

Shave/defoliate every hair from everywhere you can.I forget this as my hair is so fine and blonde but when I do it gives such a good result. So I will put my hair in a pony tail and use depilatory cream around my hairline and back of neck. These fly away hairs at the back are about 10cm long and can cause issues with gluing bald caps. But you might be suprised how fluffy you are near your hair line!

And then I use tweezers on my brows and upper lip and even my epilady if I am brave. I didn’t do my brows or lip for Rachi and in person you could tell, not so much in photos though! If you forget the hairs will get coated in paint and stick out like bristles.

Moisturise as usual but use a dry cloth after and wipe off any excess. Moisturiser and AA paint do not mix.

Application:

I have an airbrush but it is better for detail work and I rely on canned air so it’s not economically feasable atm. Also it’s toploaded so makes it hard to self paint faces! So I use a large filbert type brush. Starting on the cheeks and nose and working towards the jawline and neck then across the forehead and down to the brows, finally dabbing with the same brush with minimal paint and minimal alcohol towards the eyes. I do paint over my lids but it’s usually lighter than elsewhere and I avoid my brows as much as possible.

Shading:

For Talon this was pretty much it except some minor shading at the eyes and of course the painting of the tattoos… I only hand painted the face and lekku, my body tattoos were transfers. Very expensive, fiddly but if done right works really well. It’s about $50 an application atm. I hope I can get that down and also to get my tattoos a little more finetuned. I am not happy to share my graphics as I did use Jan’s work so much on this. However I will ask her permission once they are actually okay to convert to PDF as I know it would help a lot of Talons in the waiting.

 

For Liara and Rachi though I then got stippling with a sponge and the pallettes. Lots of white for Liara on the nose and jawline and cheeks and a little pink on the eyes.

I use a range of sponges. For liara I used the defolitaing side of the depilitory sponge as it is very open celled and very firm. This makes for a light freckly type of effect.

For Rachi I used a latex wedge for the cheeks as it lays down a lighter but more easily blended layer of colour.

For Rachi and Liara I also wear aggressive lashes! There is always a gap between lash line and lashes so once in place I use a very long pointed brush and use the very tip to fill in tat line. And then also top the lashes.

For the eyes I also use black to line under the eye and bend with a colour I use to shade. So for Liara this is a purple as well as pink. And use white abover the liner on my upper lashes before getting the pink/other pastel shader over it. And also a little white directly under the brow. Again i will over colour with another pastel if it is too stark.

I also paint in my brows with a fine brush and black paint usually. Twi’lek and Asari are reptilian essentially so their brows look painted in anyway.

The good news is you cannot go too far. Once you look painted you look painted. You may as well use every trick in the book to make your eyes look bigger, give definition to your jaw and cheeks as you can.

I basically use old theatre make up tricks in the alien colours to counter the flattening effect of opaque colour.

To remove:

I have used a few abbreviations so here they are all consolidated 🙂

Fill a basin with hot hot water. Put in your face cloth. Take out and wring then put on your face. This is like having a nice steam facial and helps by getting your face sweating. Do this a few times and be careful. You want that theraputic heat not scalding heat!

Next use same face cloth with a gentle soap. Gently use the cloth and soap on your cheeks and jaw and the less sensitive areas.

If this has been going well you won’t need to try the next but you may…

For my hands I spritz with IA (Isopropy Alcohol) or ethanol (“meths” in NZ though no methanol is involved any more thank goodness) and use a hot facecloth again and scrub. I kind of beat up my hands anyway.

I will also use IA/ethanol on my neck and arms etc. But I avoid my face and also any areas I have pulled PA from (edges of latex appliances). Well I do *now*. Lesson leart the hard way!

For the face I also use a good big dollop of Aveeno and work then in to the skin already cleaned and in to the edges of the paint to help lift it. The heat from the face cloth, the moisturiser and gentle buffing action will remove most. (I use this to remove street make up too).

But if you have some Isopropyl Myristate (IM) this is the ideal time to use it.

It is oily and mega effective so always keep it separate from your main kit and well sealed. IA/ethanol with dissolve the paint and then evaporate leaving the paint actually still usable (if you can get at it). IM does not. I suspect it joins to the binder like an emollient so one end is soluble in oil and the other in alcohol and even water. So a forever solution.

Baby oil helps but it is a mechanical action with massage and heat helping.

If you use IM or baby oil remember to also then clean your face with a gentle cleanser and use your moisturiser. They are oily so can clog pores.

 

Sorry for huuuuuuge wall of text! I could have broken this up as well 😉

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Photo by Stewart McKenny at Armageddon Sydney 2011
Photo by JudasNZ at Wellington Armageddon 2011

PAX attempts

I knew PAX to be essentially tinted glue, tinted medical adhesive grade glue. It is used for skin not just appliances, I just spoke to a Hobbit actor who recalled his days of PAX on LotR so… we both sighed about IM and how we each had lovely care packages in which it was contained 😉

Anyway, I am not part of the regulation of make up artists in the US or anywhere for that matter so DO NOT DO THIS TO SOMEONE ELSE! Unless you have their permission and everyone is fully aware of what it actually is.

Prosthetic Aide and Liquitex was the original formulation and used on Latex appliances. Why? Aside from durablility and endless colour options the chemical composition does not degrade the latex. It offers a lot of protection in fact. Cake make up may contain petro chemicals which will break down latex pretty quick smart.

PA is an acrylic based glue used for medical prosthetics. So it is water mixable when uncured but water-resistant at least when cured.

Galadriel

My first foray was for Galadriel up there back in 2003. I hadn’t got the tone right because I didn’t realise how red my hair had turned (it was two years into methotrexate therapy which is notorious for making hair grow back differently after it all falls out). And it was too late. It was better when I wasn’t surrounded by so much greenery 😉 The stage had red curtain from memory so my hair toned down visually.

Anyway. This wasn’t PAX but a much easier to remove alternative. J&J Clean and Clear moisturiser (still available) with some acrylic paint. The moisturiser is about the only one you can do this with as it is meant to not deliver a deep dose of oils or anything to young skin. But it does carry the pigments and thins them out nicely.

Samara

For Samara I used a very similar mix with a little Liquiset added in. And a little PA as I used it to hold the appliance on my head.

Full PAX

For Shaak Ti and Darth Tykhi it was full on PAX. And I wanted to tear my skin off. Also that is the same colour paint in both cases. Convention lighting can do weird things to colour.

In all cases I used a filbert style brush, foundation brushes are a kind of this shape (rounded paddle shape) and lots of careful layering. PAX takes a while to dry and it goes very tacky when it is close to dry. You need to powder to set at just the right moment or you get powder patches.

You can go swimming in the stuff.

As for wanting to tear my skin off? It’s like wearing an extra full layer of skin, dermis, epidermis and subdermis. I felt very very claustrophobic. Especially the paint around my thighs. The paint flexes but not as much as skin.

So recommended? Only if you absolutely have to and if PAX is genuinely cheaper than the newer alternatives. Which it may be where you live. Here PA is exceedingly expensive.

Cons: difficult to remove once cured (really hot bath with lots of soap, you will be sweating) some rubbing alcohol and if you can Isopropyl Myristate. This makes the glue break down permanently and gums it up so you’ll need your own towel and facecloth etc. at an hotel.

It’s messy to work with and tidy as you go. The slow cure and water solubility while curing makes it easy to transfer to everything. Also it’s glue.

Pros: it stays put. Stays put. Unless you say lie on the carpet and lean on your elbows and then you might transfer some from essentially scrubbing it off.

If you are using latex appliances it’s a once stop no wories about matching shop! It’s fantastic for painting detail over AA paint as you can wipe it off with a damp cloth when you make a mistake but once cured grips like a limpet!

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Fauna of the Jungle, for the NZBAA awards in 2008 I think. I got the Audience prize XD
Evil Queen at the Cosplay Ball 2010- ignore the setroid induced moonface

Base and Buff:

The first is great, really great to get “natural” looks that work well under camera. I’m now old enough that I have been worrying about foundation settling where I don’t want it to but was intoduced to the most fabulous tool ever. The “stipple” or airbrush brush. Can’t miss them they are usually synthetic and have dense black fibres and then longer finer white fibres that extent to form a flat top.

I have this one and looooove it 🙂 Going to get a second one. I have  Revlon Color Creations and pump that into my hand and literally stipple and sweep the liquid on lightly and wow. What a difference! Those stay put make ups tend to get really tacky really quickly so I now do this immediately after moisturising (Aveeno in this case, not for paint, I’ll get to that later!) and might even put a little in with the foundation.

 

For human tones (or in that range close to my own) I use the same brush (sweeping motion)  to set with powder  which helps keep the brush from clumping which makes it easier to clean after. Isopropyl Alcohol and a gentle cloth for this one.

For the greenifying above I took a densely coloured powder and a velour puff and just buff with it in to the foundation, lightly then more firmly to get a nice even colour. But your own skin underneath shows through a little and so you don’t need to shade and highlight quite as much as you do with paint.

Evil Queen photo by Sylvie

In both cases the green was by ChiChi and in a compressed compact. Lovely rich colour. And really reasonably priced.

I also used Liquiset and PAX (prosthetic Aide and acrylic paint) for line details where suitable. PAX for under neck and liquiset around eyes.

They are also mica rich so I avoided flash photography where possible. With a setting spray my hands stayed pretty green all evening but you can see some wear under the metal necklace and my hands in the Wvil Queen photo.

BTW, the fauna of the Juncle costume was my Witchblade costume with extra bits added. All caulk silicon mixed with pigments and powdered into metallic hyper shine. Like a beetle carapace.

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Make up part one

I think I have to accept I am perma banned from my own site and hosts so Tumblr gets the blog posts I’d make over there. Sigh.

I like to either work with street make up as a base and buff subtle/not so subtle colour in with brushes and velour pads. This works well when you have the colour in a compact where you can do touch ups but does last a good evening.

Or I go hard core with the paint because at at conventions I have to keep moving or I crash. There are bugger all photos of me at cons because I’m not in place for long enough 😉 But it means I am always on the job always looking for people to enthuse at. It’s just part of my job as Cosplay Coordinator for the shows in NZ (and Melbourne) and member of the Rebel Legion and 501st (and occasionally for the SCA.) I’m never flitting away to look for purchases, it’s to do the one on one thing. Not sure how many people actually realise how much is involved (though I may need to set an alarm to make sure I have a proper break).

So it is rare that I have a chance to reset or fix anything once the main doors open at a convention! That habit has spilled over to my funtimes visits too.

Nest post will be about an easy but effective method and then the one after that will be all about AA 🙂

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jesuislegrandefromage:

gifs-gifs-gifs-gifs-gifs:

They’re pouring latex on him to make a false chest. So that they can place the arc reactor prop in him and make it legitimately look like it’s embedded in is flesh and with tears and scar tissue. The latex is colored so they can see where they are applying and how thick the layers are. It will then be airbrushed to his skintone and details like nipples scar tissue discoloration will be added.

Here’s that picture

image

Then the reactor prop is added to the dimple. Basically the latex becomes fake skin and they tear part of the center open to embed it.

image

Now you can see how realistic it looks. 

I cannot express enough how much I love little behind the scenes things like this. 

Ack no! That is silicon used to make the mold of his chest which is then cast and sculpted over and another mold made and then finally the (probably foam latex but could be silicon) appliance made.

The “dimple” pic is after a plaster jacket has been applied to keep the silicon stable- that’ll be what the white stuff is on his abs and arms. Also note how one of the technicians holds his head back? you need to be in just the right position to capture the same tendon and muscle tension you want in the final mold you are working over- my head cat is going to be denuded of ears as they are going to be in the way when I want to make cowls. That looks to be RDJs own musculature as all three techs are in the same positions it has to be the same day as the mold was made.

No tearing either! You can’t control tearing like that and you need precise multiple copies to shoot and reshoot scenes later… it’s so much more complicated. Lets give proper credit where due for the hundred of hours that go into making movie prosthetics and props. From design, to proof of concept to actual production to on set and warehouse maintenance.

So you want to work with thermoplastics?

Just be warned the lower the temp required the more likely you will end up with this sort of issue. That is a set of medical splints made from one of the many medical grade thermoplastics (thermoplastics have been used for splints for a long time and cost about the same as the stuff marketed at cosplayers- I was looking into them a decade ago for my Galadriel breastplate). On the left we have the left hand as left in the car over night and on the right the one brought inside. Thumb to the outside in both cases.

Yes it is summer but this was not even in direct sunlight just in the car. Overnight. Last night. This was not staged or deliberately done (these are needed medical devices!)

The easier a method is to use the easier it is to destroy. That said these are super fun to heat back into shape as they are super easy to form and reform and flatten and use over and over again. Part of why they were developed is the ease of remodeling.

Not saying don’t use the it, just saying there is no perfect material to work with. So think about storage and transport before choosing ease of use- there is nothing wrong with the stuff but you will need more care to look after it especially post painting/surface detail if something like this happens…

This is why I have plastic storage boxes for my armour (fibreglass- but it has paint that could potential transfer) and wire racks for my fabric and leather componants (in the shade and I switch the racks around every so often) and am open wire wardrobe in the same spot that also moves around for airflow.

I want my stuff to last as long as possible, so I build using methods used in the originals. Tiny ridiculously tiny machine stitches for corsets and Victorian- flatlined and much use of glazed cotton in areas not seen. Lots of hand finishing and interlining of facings and lining in my Renaissance gear. Use of high qualitly slip latex for my appliances (I want to do foam latex and silicon so bad but foam is super fragile and silicon is actually also fragile when encapulated in stuff that is easy to paint- think of how chicken fillets wear out, ya’ll know what I mean here!)

I think of the thermoplastics marketed to cosplayers fosshape is the one I most want to try. It’s been around for decades and the way it shrinks when worked suggests bonds form that are less easy to break.

I already use foam extruded PVC (generic term for Sintra et al), pipe PVC and styrene. The foam board is brittle but so yummy to form. PVC already formed into pipes seems to be a little softer to work with than in sheets, not quite sure why, it may be just different purposes as you need flex with plumbing! And Styrene is really prone to warping with direct heat.

And fibreglass requires hundreds of hours of sanding and bogging and sanding to get a good surface.

See, nothing is perfect, no bias. Just I do get annoyed when the cons are not given for hyped materials.

I still can’t find my own splints, which I desperately need, so may be buying a small sheet of stuff to redo them 😉 Mine are for trigger finger so wrap around index and middle fingers up to the first joint and extend on to the palm to thumb. I was aware of the melty issues so always kept mine out of the sun. Sigh. But I have lost them somehow.

operafantomet:

strangerthanudreamt:

One of the most dramatic changes to blocking in the new UK tour, before AIAoY, is Christine’s suicide attempt. After hearing the Phantom sing “Christine..” she is overcome by emotion and debates throwing herself off the roof of the opera house, with Raoul slowly bringing her back from the edge she crumples to the stage. It’s a pretty dark moment, and sucks the romance out of the scene. Making AIAOY a much more desperate plea than a sweeping romantic number.

Though more pronounced in the UK tour, I still wanna point out that Christine’s suicide attempt also has been done in the West End production of Phantom. Katie Knight Adams did it rather dramatic, and those to follow (like Rachel Barrell) has also incorporated it into the acting. 

My all time favourite balance was in Copenhagen (Jan 2001). The two were far enough away from each other but you couldn’t really say Christine was near the ledge- I never read it that way) and you were not sure if Raoul heard the faint “Christine…” echo, so when she is rushing around he looks a bit exasperated and almost walks off to leave her to her strange behaviour. Then the music changes and we just saw the back of Christine, hunch over and she lets out a huge sob. And at that point Raoul sees what *she* is going through not what he has been- elaborate tricks by someone wanting to cheat people from money and have the best view!
And his heart breaks, his demeanor just crumples and his “Christine?” was so incredibly quiet and full of concern for her. It wasn’t so dark as the above but it also made a really defining moment for them to pin the song on. And gave a sense of joy at the end of the song as well as hope and then of course that lead to a pretty tense “I gave you my music” secton.

It was an amazing stage moment full stop, not just as a fan 🙂

Sigh. I am so lucky to have seen the show in countries as far apart as Denmark and New Zealand 😉 The World Tour is still too far away for me to even think of going and it was a major effort to get to Oz when it was a set down production. But I did it!


All my text! Gone! WAH??? Tumblr monsters et my words?

Anyway, this is how I met several of the guests at Armageddon yesterday. But when you commit to Alcohol Activted paint you are committed for the day!

Rachi Sitra, Jedi Archeologist. I tried to make the Indy/Solo connection but failed. I have a very Teutonic sense of humour. It needs explaining to others. So dry it is something Rachi would have dug up.

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