Below are some photos of a friend of mine who is a professional magician. He wanted to do this incredibly, amazing illusion where he gets wrapped up in a large cloth and right up until the very last minute, the audience sees him. Then when he gets finally wrapped up all the way, the assistant walks him forward (because he can't see, being wrapped up). But when they get to the front of the stage (he?) is unwrapped and we find that it is another one of his assistants. Then he appears at the back of the auditorium in an amazing relocation move that looks like it happened in a split second. Quite effective and never fails to get the great audience reaction.

Well, obviously, he has another guy who is the same size and body type as he is. The other guy wears this mask and wig and is so convincing because he can stay open to the audience showing his face. And in most situations the audience is a little distance back and you CANNOT tell this is not him. Then while the guy who wears the mask is onstage, the magician is doing the dirty work of getting away and out to the front of the auditorium.

This is a shot of the finished life cast I did. One thing I used to do that I will NEVER do again, is brush on a layer of clear shellac. Some books recommend this but it isn't needed. When you put the clay on it and then plaster goes over a sculpted area, the shellac breaks down and makes the negative and positive molds almost glue together. Live and learn, I guess!!

This is a shot of the mask with the basic paint scheme that will match the magician's face when he has on the stage makeup. Since the distance to the nearest audience is usually fairly far, I just have painted the eyebrows on rather than use ventilated hair. Besides, he has used this slush molded latex mask for about two years now and it is just NOW getting to the place that he needs a new one. Something to be said for saving THAT negative mold so I can cast a new mask and get it ready to paint.

This is just a side view of the same. The casting process to create this slush latex mask was a fairly long and drawn out process. I had to do the life cast on him first because we wanted to keep the plaster positive life cast. Once that was readied, I then made an alginate negative of the plaster positive, an alginate positive of the alginate negative, and finally a plaster negative of the alginate positive. WOW!! that's hard to figure out, but it worked.

This is just a front view of the same. The thing about this photo is that it looks much more RED than it really is. It matched the makeup he wears onstage and is NOT this pinkish. It is more tanned and only slightly ruddy. And his lighting system alters the colors somewhat anyway and the red tones are reduced onstage.

This is a shot of the mask with the wig he uses. The magician wears a wig onstage as does the guy who wears the mask. They are duplicates and are styled exactly the same so it really legitimizes the look when the second guy (in the mask) is onstage when the switch is made. And I have seen this act. When he does this, you CANNOT tell that it isn't the magician. He does this illusion to music so there is no need for talking.

Below are a couple odd photos of a head I created for the Shakespeare play "Measure For Measure". There was a character who, in the course of the play, is beheaded by the King and they bring it in to show him that the deed was done. Well, the actor who played the role looked enough like this guy (literally), that I didn't have to do a lifecast or anything else. And I already had the negative cast of this person's face from another play we had done several years before, "Comedy Of Errors", where two sets of characters had to be made to look like twins.

This was a front half head only and I created it all using slush latex. Reason I used that was that it was all I had and they had no budget to buy anything. So I took an old styrofoam wig block, and attached everything to that securely, added the wig, quickly blocked out some ears and slush cast them, glued them on, painted it and finished it. It looks pretty crappy compared to what I can do now but it worked and was effective enough for their uses. Besides, I didn't put much time into it because too many people wanted to play with it so I made it fairly durable and didn't care if it got messed up. It didn't cost me much in time or supplies (which I had) nor did it cost them anything. But it worked.

These were nothing more than slush molded latex masks. But they were a great exercise in mold making, matching colors to finish the pieces and duplicating someone's face in mask form. But they both have held up very well for two years (maybe more - I've lost track). These projects and photos simply point up another of the kinds of things we as makeup artists can do for people.