"Face Off: Season 2" Audition

Have you ever seen the show "Face Off" on the SyFy channel? No, it has nothing to do with the John Travolta/Nick Cage movie. It's a "reality" show about special effects artists competing against each other each week to eventually win some cash, some makeup, and some heart-felt pats on the back. I LOVED season one. So (at the insistence of my closest friends and sweet-sweet wife) I sent in this little audition tape.

For this audition, I sculpted this original monster mask.

I think it turned out pretty okay. But from that point on, everything that could go wrong, went wrong. I made a 2-piece mold that created an undercut...LOCKING the front half to my armature. I went ahead and busted it loose, but it broke the front half of my mold. It wasn't in a critical area, so I continued on to latex.

Unfortunately, my latex kit is a few years old, and I usually only bake one mask per year, so all the chemicals had turned a little murky. As a result, I had to make two tries at it (each taking 4-hours to bake). The second attempt was moderately successful, except that I had TOTALLY run out of mold release. NOTE TO READERS: Cooking spray does NOT make a very good mold release. Fortunately, the design of this was supposed to be that of a gross decayed zombie, so a few tears here and there worked out just fine.

At that point, it seemed like I was home free. All I had to do was put it on, video tape it and edit it all together. I shot it all on my FlipCam (in HD) and on my iPhone (not even SD quality). The conversion of this digital media took HOURS. But a couple of Lone Stars later, I calmed down and put together the video you can see above, or at my YouTube page HERE.

Well, it's all in their hands now. Wish me luck!