Creepy Alien Bits
We need to give our little alien friend
six fingers and toes - just about the easiest possible way to take
a human body and make it appear less human.
We probably didn't get very good copies of the hands and feet
from our original body cast - we were trying to get the entire
body shape rather than little details like that. It's possible
we didn't even include the hands and feet in our original body
cast since we knew we'd be replacing them later anyway. Also,
our body-cast subject was standing - if we did use the
original foot position the feet would be at right angles to the
legs. We can't have that - our alien will look like a
department-store mannequin that somebody knocked over.
Well, more like one, anyway.
So we do specific hand and foot casts on our original subject
- or anybody else whose extremities are approximately the same
size. We use our clay pour technique again to get instant
hand-and-foot sculptures which we resculpt just a bit, adding
the extra fingers and toes. (Or if we prefer, an equally
acceptable method would be to sculpt new hands and feet from
scratch.)
We take our finished clay extremities and attach them to our
clay body, taking care to position the feet in a relaxed pose.
We smooth the surface of the clay over the connections, and our
alien body sculpture is ready.
Alien Heads and You
When it comes to making
our alien head we've got the same options as we did with our body
- free-sculpture vs. resculpted cast of a real human. Again, it's
a
mostly human look we're going for here so we might
start with a real person's head cast.
1. Alginate applied for head-cast. 2. Completed
head-cast with front section removed
Then again we might not. It really doesn't matter either way
- creating creature heads is done every day in the FX biz,
whether it's a makeup we'll be applying to an actor, or just a
dummy head. There are many ways to go about it, depending on the
artist's preference.
To go with our chubby little body, we'd probably make a chubby
little head, with a little double chin and bags under the eyes
and so on. Like this...
And hopefully this time we won't forget our alien
will be seen on its back...
Ooops.
We connect the head sculpture to the rest of the body. Now our
entire alien sculpture is finished, with the clay skin textured
continuously throughout.
Time for the second mold
Because our clay
model won't twitch or breathe or get claustrophobic or ask to go
to the bathroom, we can make a much better mold of this sculpture
than we did on our original human subject.
Anyplace two sections of the mold come together, our final
alien body will show a seam line that will need cleaning up
later. But this time we can be careful to construct our mold
with close-fitting joints and put them in places where seams are
less likely to be seen on camera.
We also can make this mold of silicone rubber and fiberglas,
rather than alginate and plaster. Silicone rubber will mirror
the body's shapes and textures just like alginate does - but
silicone won't dry and shrink. The fiberglas will be both
lighter and stronger than the plaster bandage.
Sculpture being molded in fiberglas.
(No, that's not an alien, that's Casper!)
Our new mold will last for as long as we need it and we can
refill it to make as many alien corpses as we want.
And Now - A Tricky Decision ...
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