I do like a good prop. I’ve made a few things over the years and I really liked the mask worn by Immortan Joe from the 2015 film Mad Max: Fury Road. I sometimes print stuff off on my printer as fun little side projects and thought I’d run one of his masks off but I struggled to find one that was right. All of the ones I could find didn’t seem to have the right scale so I found one that was sort of right, modified it a little in Cinema 4D and started printing.
and the pipe parts.
What a handsome chap.
Now my 3d printer is ok. It’s not got a really high res on the print and the filament I was using kept giving me some problems.
More than a few issues but it doesn’t matter. I was going to sculpt over the top of it anyway. I extended the jawline back and up by adding some plastic sheet.
Then I started sculpting. The old favourites came out, Milliput and Aves Apoxie Sculpt. That stuff is so good to work with, I’m really becoming an Apoxie sculpt convert.
What a looker.
Mffrgble grbblleee argglleble.
Aaahhh screw it.
Primer timer.
Then some painting and I’m ready to hit the wastelands. I used some of my oil paints to weather it. Burnt Sienna, umber, a small amount of black over the metals and a bit of blue for contrast in places. Nice and oily.
I fit a band around the back and it stays on quite well. I even went into town a couple of times during the pandemic with it on.
Immortan Dave.
So does the story end there? Nope, of course not… it came out so well I got a few people asking if I could make more.
Yes. Yes I can. I started again, only this time I was making a few tweaks.
Alas, poor Immortan Joe! I knew him, Max, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.
Here we go again.
Yes, I own a fez.
I got a foam head, a load of plasticine, and a lot of materials from SmoothOn.
Building up the plasticine over the head I mounted the mask onto it.
on goes the Smooth-Cast 57D.
Get it on, nice and thick. Then on top of that goes Plasti-paste to make the reinforced jacket. This holds the shape as the Smooth-Cast is very wibbly wobbly.
Time to demould.
Honestly, this stuff is amazing. Every little detail has been picked up.
To make the masks I used Rebound 25. It’s very bendy and quite robust. It sets slowly which means it won’t suddenly snap set and be all blobby. This is quite important for things like masks.
The downside was, it’s quite hard to get into a few of the smaller spots like the screwheads. So I cut off any which didn’t cast quite right and put real screws in.
Don’t worry, I didn’t forget the vents.
This is the part I did get lazy. I didn’t do anything with these masks for over a year. Yup, I did all of this in 2020, cast the last bits in Jan 2021 and its now Feb 2022…
I shall finish these two masks off and make some more.
To be continued…