Molding and Casting: Making Three Dimensional Objects Like Masks and Toys

I have taken up a number of hobbies in my day, including playing the guitar, but none are cooler than my modeling, molding and casting hobby. This art, which is a subject you can actually study in college and in specialized makeup schools, enables you to create three-dimensional items out of a variety of materials like rubber, plastic, cement and plaster compounds.

Primarily, I make rubber masks and rubber toys and props. I usually use a picture as a reference in making a replica in rubber and I sculpt the item in oil based plastiline clay. The sculpture is called a model.

Next I make a plaster of Paris mold on top of the sculpture. Cleaning the clay out of the mold is next and then you use a casting compound like liquid rubber on the mold and let it sit for a while. A cheese like slurry develops on the inside of the mold and you pour out the rest of the rubber out of the mold and save it. Rubber is somewhat pricey.

Let the rubber that forms the slurry in the mold congeal for a while and then focus a hair dryer on it and vulcanize the rubber. Do that for about an hour or two.

One of the problems with making the molds (they're made of plaster

if your castings are going to be made out of rubber) is that it's very messy and you can jam up your plumbing with it. Some people know how to be neat and there are people who specialize in making molds.

Next, you pop the rubber piece out of the mold. That's called a casting - an unpainted rubber duplication of you original sculpture.

The next step is to paint the item. You can use rubber based paints (I get them from Monster Makers) or solvent-based paints (Union Process) and you're off. You can also get tints from a number of companies.

Some of the masks I've done are the Hulk, Godzilla, the Son of Godzilla, the Cyclops from the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, and the Destroyer who's a villain in Thor comic books (Marvel Comics© company). I've sold limited numbers of these creations at comic book conventions and horror/sci-fi conventions.

I've also done some hand puppets on various topics like an original mutant dinosaur I came up with and one of Gigan, who's a villain of Godzilla's. I did several versions of the bat brooch that the late Yvonne Decarlo used to wear when she played Lilly Munster on the old Munsters television show of the 1960's.

In the early "90s I hired a freelance sculptor named Mark Alfrey to design a line of quality masks for me. He designed eight masks and I turned the best one, a werewolf skull, into a parody of my parent"s late dog, Princess. You can view Mark's work at his website at http://www.markalfrey.com.

Subsequently, Mark worked for Distortions Unlimited which is a very successful mask making operation and after that, he went to Hollywood and worked on a lot of TV shows, like Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Babylon 5, and Hercules the Legendary Journeys, etc. Mark did all the character makeup in those shows and you can view his work on his website. One of the really great sculpts he did was about Echidna, Mother of Monsters which was on the Hercules show. It's somewhat similar to the Creature from the Black Lagoon. He also designed a 6'7” version of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, that's considered by the experts to be the very best version of that character ever created. That character was actually created in the 1950's and a lot of people have sculpted it over the years.

Mark has a series of videos out and they're inexpensive. I have several of them including his videos on how to make molds, how to sculpt movie monsters and how to sculpt a human head.

A second thing you can do with the general skills you develop in sculpting is to make what's called garage kits. Garage kits are homemade model kits that a really good sculptor can design to be even better than model kits you buy in a hobby store. Since the molds are made of flexible materials, the modeling can include undercuts, which you can't do with metal molds. So a lot of really great garage kits are better than commercially available model kits.

Sculpting in polymer clay like Sculpey or Super Sculpey develops garage kits. Next you bake the sculpture and after it hardens you use a miniature hobby saw to cut the sculpture into pieces that are then molded using silicon rubber or polyurethane rubber. A really great site on the web is at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/garagekits. The site is run by Wayne “The Dane” Hansen who's a professional kit builder.

I know Wayne personally from some comic conventions he was at and also the twice-yearly horror convention in Secaucus, NJ called Chiller Theatre. Wayne has a whole bunch of videos out on how to sculpt and get into this hobby or profession if you have the talent for it. He also has a video out on how to sculpt the Creature from the BlackLagoon and I bought that video.

Wayne has videos out on how to sculpt beautiful women too, so he's not limited to the horror genre and neither is Mark by the way. Wayne also has a video out on how to sculpt medallions. All of this is worth checking out. If you have kids, they'd really get a kick out of getting into this hobby or career path.

Monster Makers sells a variety of start up kits, which are packages of varying costs to get you into mask making. The least expensive kit is about three hundred dollars and the most popular kit is about four hundred dollars. It's worth it if you want to get into this really cool art form.

Dick Smith, the “Dean of Hollywood Makeup Artists”, also has a three-part course out on special effects makeup. Quite a few people have taken that course and it helped them develop their skills. It costs about $2,000.

Dick also has a kit where you can test the waters and it's cheaper than his professional course. It's only $300 and the materials are about the same price.

There area a number of schools devoted to teaching makeup artistry. They advertise in the Web and also in some magazines like Fangoria.

Personally, what turns me on so much about this hobby is the ability to turn out a tangible object in a matter of days from a sketch or an idea. No machinery is necessary.

No metal shop items, no injection molds and it's all up the artisan's skill to crank out quality pieces.

There's also a method to go from clay sculptures to metal molds and it's called metal spraying. It's discussed on one of Wayne's sites either garagekits or the figurekits Yahoo Groups.

Once this hobby bites you, it never releases its hold. I still sculpt years after I learned this craft.