Breaking Faces

Last night was supposed to be the quickest part of the face casting process -- separating the alginate resin faces from its hard fiberglass shell cover. It was ONLY supposed to take about 20-30 minutes. We spent over two hours working on it, because the mold release that we used (recommended to us by TWO professionals in the SFX field) FAILED! So, the plaster faces were sticking to the inside of the soft mold, and the soft mold was sticking to the inside of its fiberglass shell!

Consequently, we had to take chisel/screwdrivers and mallets to those wonderful plaster casts that we created back in December, because they were creating too much friction for us to pull apart the fiberglass shell & soft mold. In addition, the mold release had pooled a little bit on the inside of the fiberglass shell, which added even more friction. According to my friend who has worked at a professional S/FX shop, this "should" have been easy.

Part of me was hoping to preserve these casts, but when they refused to come out of their molds, well, it was time to break the faces. (Plus, because we have these molds, I can always cast another one.)

A lot of effort went into creating these plaster casts, and it took some effort to fully destroy them (except for the occasional face parts that we managed to pry out of the soft resin).

Here's the final soft resin cast and it's fiberglass shell, which will help keep the soft mold shape and provide foundational support for future casts.

And here are some of the broken face parts that we managed to pull out wholesale from the resin. I think I might preserve mine as some form of modern art. :-)

The next step? Cast some face molds to do some prosthetic work, but that won't happen until mid-June when some of our crazy convention schedules have subsided!