Funny Faces

After working on the armature and clay maquette for the jester character in my short, I decided to work on the head and replacement faces that I will use to give him expression. (I really wanted to mold the maquette, but I am struggling to find ultracal 30 locally. But I suppose that will be a topic of a new blog post.)

I am using silicone molds to cast the faces in resin. Its a simple process, just mix equal amounts of parts A and B to pour over a sculpt to make a rubber mold. I did this over a tile floor for easy clean up.

Various materials I used for molding/casting

For the main part of the head, I created a single part mold formed in a plastic cup. For the faces I used a two-part mold as the shape was more complex and I wanted better control of the seems. You can get a better idea looking at the pictures below.

Single Part Mold

Two-Part Mold After Resin Cast

Main Head Part With Eyes

Making the plastic parts was as simple as mixing parts A and B of the resin and pouring it into the molds. The two part mold was a bit more tricky. If you check out the pictures, you can see it had to have been made a particular way to ensure resin would fill the mold and prevent causing air pockets.

Inside of the Two-Part Mold

Face Casting

The mold I made isn't perfect, so I do have a lot of flashing and clean up for the plastic parts. I use a hobby knife to trim the flashing and thoroughly sand each face with 220 grit sandpaper to smooth out any unwanted surface texture. As you can see, I left a portion around the mouth area to fill in later. To save material and cost, I am making different mouth shapes on each face as opposed to sculpting and molding each individual mouth shape. Why didn't I just go with replacement mouths you ask? I am trying to prevent any real noticeable seems on the face that I would have to remove in post. Also, I am not a fan of the "sausage" look to lips and mouths commonly seen on replacement mouths. Its not a horrible look, but I feel it doesn't really fit the style of the jester character.

Before and After Clean up

Several Faces with Different Expressions

I use polymer clay to model the mouths on face. When baked, the clay hardens and can be sanded down to blend more with plastic it is adhered to.  So hopefully when the faces are primed and painted, the differences in materials will be totally unnoticeable.

Face Close up

Face Close up II