How to Apply a Prosthetic (with Blood!)
Welcome to more how to make up tips. Today we will be featuring how to apply a latex prosthetic and blend it in with blood.
First off we need our shopping list. For this we are going to need:
- Latex prosthetic. I’m going to be using Metal Attack from Woochie. (I have the Glass Attach pictured)
- Blood Gel (Also can use Stage Blood. I only suggest the cheep Halloween stuff if there is no other option)
- Spirit Gum
- Make up Sponge
- Stipple Sponge
- Q-Tips
- Bruise Wheel (or Stack)
First off figure out where on your body you want to put this. Most images will put these on the face. Mainly because it’s a great place to put things for an example, but you can an easily put them mostly anywhere on your body that isn’t a moving joint. Alot of people will come in and ask to have stuff put on their neck. This rarely works out. Your neck moves around alot and there is nothing stable there to glue to. Most anything will fall of by the end of the night. There some newer items that have velcro that goes around the neck to hold stuff on that work well.
First off for attaching our item here is to apply Spirit Gum Adhesive to the back of it. Bottles tend to have a little brush on the inside.
You can apply the skin instead if you choose. If it’s going to be a looong night you can apply spirit gum to both skin and the prosthetic. If you like you can get Spirit Gum Remover. It is great for cleaning up with. You do not need it though. your natural oils and sweat will break down the adhesive as the night goes on making it relatively easy to take off at the end of the night.
Now there is a step when using spirit gum that isn’t communicated very well. You need to work air into the adhesive to make it sticky. You can do this my simply tapping it with your finger. You will see little stands start to come off it and it becomes very tacky when it is ready to be used.
Many people will simply brush it on and push the prosthetic on to the skin. It will often fall off quickly with out working air into it.
Now we will apply it to the skin. Once the Spirit Gum is in place you can just press it on where you need to be and make sure you get all the edges down.
Sometimes you will get some issues with edges not staying down. You can lift it up and reapply the Spirit gum as needed following the steps above. and press the trouble some edges down till they cooperate.
Next we are going to start blending it in with some make up. When people are on a budget this is the step that gets cut the most. You can blend it in with only blood, but I think it looks better with a little make up. Using a Bruise Wheel, or Bruise Stack mentioned in the How to Make A Bruise you can make some irritation around the wound. I like to use the reddish colors since it is pretty fresh.
Be careful as you are apply make up on the prosthetic. The make up will appear differently on the prosthetic as it does on your skin, so it is best to go light with it.Also be sure to paint the skin around the prosthetic as well. It’s best to pretend there is no edge and apply accordingly.
Next is the blood. You can go as crazy or as light as you like. I tend to go a bit lighter on the blood because I want people to be able to see the rest of the work. Otherwise everything gets lost in a sea of blood. Since this is a puncture wound I am going to use a stipple sponge. It is very textured and will leave a splatter look to the blood. Then with a Q-Tip I put blood around the metal it self in larger globs so it will drip down and the night goes on.
Also note how the blood completely hides that curved edge around the metal that was visible in the previous steps. Another cool thing about Blood Gel is that it is a bit heat sensitive. It will dry, but as you body temperature goes up, it will start to run which makes things look really cool over the course of a night.
Here is our completed model also the sporting the Bruise from before.
How to Make a Bruise
So Halloween is coming and you are searching the internet how to do cool make up. Well hallopino.com is here to help. I am bringing back last years how-to section on how to do various make up effects. I’m trying to keep things pretty simple and easy. But you can build on top of these ideas to make more complex ideas of your own.
Today we are going to learn how to make a bruise.
A quick note: the joke of, “I can make a real bruise really easy for you.” gets old fast.
The items required is very easy for this. We simply need a Bruise Wheel (pictured) from Ben Nye, or a Bruise Stack from Cinema Secrets and a make up sponge.
Odds are the crappy halloween stores that crop up around the holiday will have the Bruise Stack. It’s a bit different colors, but the theory on how to use it still applies. Most year round stores should hopefully carry one or the other. As for the sponge, it’s not really needed, but tends to be better then sticking your finger in someone’s eyes in an attempt to give them a black eye. You can find one at pretty much any make up section at a drug store or grocery store.
So lets start off with our subject. Today we are going to give her a black eye.
What we want to do to begin is take a bruise wheel and start with the darkest color which is that deep purple. On the Bruise Stack there is a black. I would advise to skip that and move to their dark purple. this will be the base of our bruise or black eye. This will most likely be where the person was hit, or most blood vessels were broken. You can begin by being fairly sloppy and applying it to the face where you want your bruise.
You don’t want to go too big with this color because the other colors are going to go on top of this and will have a larger footprint.
Now, some people might look at that and feel that is the type bruise they are looking for, it looks bad, fresh, it looks like that time I get hit with that baseball. The good part to this is that it is all subjective. I’m going to give a lot of steps here. If you are making your bruise and you like what you are seeing and want to stop, then stop and call it finished right there.
Our next step here is going to be adding the next color, which on both the wheel and the stack will be the next darkest color. With the bruise you want to be fairly messy and apply this over previous color spreading things out wider then before.
And from there you want to continue around the wheel to the next darkest color, and apply it in the same manor. If your next color is a green or a yellow then stop. I believe the wheel has one more red/purple color then the stack does.
I went a bit crazy on that color. You don’t have to go that big. You want to make what looks right for the character or effect you are making. But I am going a bit more extreme for demo purposes.
Next we have the green-ish color. This is more of a heeling color. If you are making a fresh bruise, you want to skip this step. If you want an older looking bruise you most likely want to use this, but sparingly. You’ll want to apply this in areas that might not be as dark, as those would heal first. I personally find that people are kinda grossed out by the green, so it’s fun to add.
And now our bruise is complete.
A few things about preserving the make up. Most times if you using creme make up and want to head out you want to powder the make up to protect it. With the bruise I like to avoid that. I feel the powder dulls it out too much. Also as the night goes on it will fade and the more it fades the cooler it is going to look.
BONUS: Sometimes I like to add a little bit of blood to a black eye. More of a rough fight, almost breaking the skin kind of look. With a stipple sponge and blood gel, I’ll lightly go over the cheek bone for the look, like below.
I tend to go with Cinema Secrets Blood Gel over anything else you might find at the halloween store because in this case since we went light it will dry and look a bit like scabs.
079 – Wounded
I realize I tend to keep my comments short and don’t have to much to say in addition to the image. Sometimes an image has nothing to do with the day beyond a shoot I did. Sometimes I can try to show some feeling.
Mug Shots – Psycho
Next mug shots. Now I’m thinking she’s guilty. I mean just look at all that blood. Next mug shot on Monday.
Halloween Make up 2009 – Round 3
On to the last weekend of Halloween make up at Josie O’Kain Costume Shop in Joliet, IL. I’m going to be splitting this up into 2 posts as we did a lot of stuff. I won’t be posting a lot of the make up that we did. Partially cause we had some repeat make up jobs from previous weekends. I love when people keep coming back, but I don’t want to show you all the same images over again. We did a lot of make up on kids on Halloween morning, that I’m not going to share either. They looked great, but I don’t feel right posting images of the kids. There were also about 4 or 5 make up jobs that I simply forgot to take a photo of.
I’ll start off with the stuff we did on Friday. First we had a Frankenstein monster using one of the kits from Rubies. It took some work trying to get all the elements to come together for this, and still have a edge from the thick forehead appliance, but otherwise I think it came along pretty well.
Next we had a cyclops. It’s a nice latex application from Don Post. Don Post makes some nice and very creative items, but sometimes there tend to be some slight issues with the design that I’ll mention more of next time. The cyclops was a bit think so it was a little harder to hide the edges with a normal skin tone, but did the best we could on it.He did change into a costume before leaving, but I will say I’m always partial to modern day clothes with demons and monsters. Who says a cyclops can’t be a Cubs fan.
Next we have a repeat customer from last year which give Ellwyn a chance to show off her great skill with the air brush. This year our fairy wanted more of an autumn look and colors to go with her costume. I started of her base, and Ellwyn went to town on the details. The stencils for the leaves were made by the clients significant other. One of the thinks we do miss out on sometimes is that we often don’t get to see people in their complete costume as she is pictured in a dress she wore just to have the make up done in.
I’ll go ahead and jump to Saturday where I got to work on a customer that generally has come in every year for a long time. Every time I get to do something different. This time we just kept it simple with some horns that were blended in with blood as they burst through his skull.
That’s all for today. I’ll have some more images from Halloween next time.
Halloween Make Up 2009 – Round 1
The Halloween season is already upon us and he have hit our first weekend of make up appointments at the costume shop. Thought I’d take a moment and share some of the work with you.
First off we have a couple going for a dead bride & groom who are hosting a party.
I worked on his make up based upon a photo of a make up job I had done in the past and removed a chunk of his face. For the bride me and Ellwyn split the make up duties to save time.
I went went to work on the slit throat, and then Ellwyn worked on the pale color, details, and eye make up with her steadier hand. Her neck slash and his face wound were created using nose and scar wax to build up the edges, and liquid latex over the wax to secure it.
Next I had a father son pair who have been regular customers. They like a latex application from Rubies called Real FX. It’s a large, pre-colored piece that covers the entire face, but it needs some work to look as cool as it does on the package.
In order to make the 3-dimensional areas like the ridges above the eyes and the chin work, I glue cotton balls in those areas on the inside of the appliance with spirit gum. Also I cut larger areas around the eyes and cut away a couple of the edges to allow it to fit better.
The Scarecrow Real FX piece is probably the one I’ve done the most of the years. It has also had a fair amount of modifications to make it work. Over one of the eyes was a button that he cut out before hand, and one that I’ve cut out several times in the past as well. And at his request I cut the bottom chin part away from the rest, which really allowed the entire thing to have a greater fit.
Finally Ellwyn did a great job on a making a Raiders fan who was dressing up for a contest at a local game.
Broken Hearts Tidbits
Sometimes when doing a shoot I only have one specific image in my head and once we shoot that I don’t have much else to planned. That came up a little with the Broken Hearts shoot. There were soo many props and items set up in a certain way to tell the story there was really only one set up. She looked so lovely dresed up that we removed the props and moved some set peices around so we could take some more off topic photos. I want to share those with you now. Enjoy.
Biggest Fan
So, I’ve had this morbid idea in my head for a while. I think we all while growing up get this urge to touch things that we know are dangerous and will hurt us, inspite of numerous warnings. So that’s where this whole image was born out of.
I had to do some photoshopping on the fan, and it’s not the most convincing stuff I’ve ever done. The fan didn’t work, so I needed to make it look like it did. And I borrowed the fan, so I was reluctant to put real blood on it.
Zombie Jamboree
An other shot I did for the Josie O’Kain Costume Shop web page. Unfortunately due to some technical difficulty this one never really made it up in time. One of things I like about doing zombie make up is that there are so many different ways of making them. Before I made a pretty normal color zombie with gashes. This one is a more grey and splattered blood. I had made a massive cut on her cheek, but it got covered by her hair when shooting.
Also after the shoot I took her over to Wendy’s for a fun shot for a restaurant photo contest the next day.
