#8 - Start Making & The Lowdown On Cap Plastic

Blog post on this podcast is here: 

It seems it would be handy to have some sensible steps to actually start making things. So check out the podcast on this very subject and also the lowdown on cap plastic.After all, the longest of journeys start with a single step, so having some steps in mind will help you start if you are not sure where to begin making.One thing to say is that you don’t have to go through all of the processes to begin with. Just sculpting is at least getting you involved in the act of making, without the added cost or time of making moulds, casts and applying. You can of course do those too if your means permit, but the point is that if you haven’t got all that, you can still start making things in some capacity.

Make Small Things Well

We'd recommend making small things well, and then expand sophistication and scale once you gain confidence. Wounds and casualty effects are a good way to begin, because if you do make pieces to stick on, and things go a little wrong, you can smother a bit of blood or bruising over the offending edge or error. Then, as you get better, try to step away gradually from gore and try to hide your efforts less behind the red stuff.

Noses are great things to do, and if you can do a flawless nose which looks great, the scale up to noses and eyebags. Then cheeks, chin and a neck. If the nose isn’t right, then figure that first. Nobody worth their salt is impressed with huge full body appliances painted badly or with terrible edges if it doesn't display a high level of skill. So get that skill by not spreading yourself too thin on big makeup jobs.

Looking at the work of the current masters of the trade is a great way to be inspired  (and sometimes a little upset by how good the work can be) and then being able to place yourself more accurately on a continuum - where do you sit on the scale? It’s well worth checking these artists out if you haven’t yet seen any of their stuff. This is by no means a complete list - no doubt I will be blasted for the glaring omissions but it serves to start you off.

Mike Hill

Jordu Schell

Bobby C

Martin Rezard

Carlos Huante

Paul Komoda

Cap plastic

Cap plastic (not ‘cat plastic’ as some have misheard) is a flexible plastic usually supplied as a concentrated thick liquid, and thinned down with solvents for use either by conventional brushing or with an airbrush. Naturally, for airbrushing it needs to be thinned considerably to avoid blocking the fine nozzle. Clean the airbrush out after with the appropriate solvent.

Traditionally, bald cap plastic was acetone based and used to pretty much just make bald caps (although latex can also be used very successfully for bald caps), and the edges could be melted with acetone.

As silicone appliances began to use bald cap plastic as an encapsulant, so it was that more cap plastic was being used on the face instead of just as bald caps. The notion of a bald cap material which could be thinned with alcohol came about as a much less aggressive solvent to use on the skin.

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