Friday, May 28, 2010

Pro-Fx Makeup Tips - Introduction to Lifecasting - Part 3

Introduction to Lifecasting – Part 3

- Plaster bandage Support cases.

Hello again, hopefully you’ve been keeping an eye on the previous digital demo delights, and now we come to the final part of the basic lifecasting process, the support case or shell, usually made with Plaster bandage.

This is exactly the same material used in Hospitals to support a broken limb while it heals.

It often comes in rolls of varying sizes, or even sheets. For faces and general mould making work, lengths of around 10 to12 inches (250 - 300mm) are very manageable, from rolls around 6 inches or 150mm wide.

2 ply thick (2 pieces laid on top of each other and used as one) is good for use on small detail areas such as the face, hands etc, and 4 ply thick for larger moulds and bodies.


For transportation it’s good to pre-cut all the lengths you may need and fold them up, storing them in a seal top plastic bag ready for use.



For this demo, we’ve cut two small pieces, these are dipped together in a bowl of room temperature water and immediately removed.



The excess water is wringed out of the bandage and it is then applied to the alginate and smoothed into place working well into all the surface details and forms that will be present when doing a larger lifecast area.



You will note that we have applied to the alginate a layer of reinforcing Hessian again. The other reason for this is that the plaster bandage will also bond to the Hessian, giving us a mould which will all stay together as one, so the Alginate does not fall away from the support case, maintaining accuracy.




Next month…



Part 4 of our Introduction to Lifecasting – The Magic of Silicone…


Want to learn more ?


Book onto our ‘One day Intensive Facial Lifecasting’ Course, or The ‘6 Week Intensive Prosthetic Makeup’ Course