Unit 6. Practice as a Laboratory Part 2: Prosthetic

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BENEATH THE SKIN - A PROSTHETIC PROJECT

by Adam Paloczy


    Prosthetic makeup special effects is something what I definitely wanna do in the future. Many quality productions are using this effective practical way to transfer an actor to be someone or something else or modify the characters look, for example with wounds or scarfs. 

    I strongly believe that the basis of the acting profession is, the actor needs to completely turn to be someone else. When it comes to sci-fi or fantasy, acting skills are not enough for this transformation so they need some extra support, which will come from the SFX department. 

 I love the fact that the filmmakers are still using these practical special effects, however, CGI started to take over the make-up special effect field as well. Martin Scorsese made his film “The Irishman” in 2019, in this movie, there are no fantasy figures, however, there are big actor legends such as Joe Pesci, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Scorsese wanted them to look much younger in the film than they are in real life. Personally, I thought, that’s okay, they will need some good make-up artist for that job. This is not really what happened. They used digital technology to make them younger in the movie. Frame by frame, they applied some computer-generated effect to achieve the look what the director wanted. Is this the next step in the special effect business? I hope not, otherwise, my knowledge will be useless after I finish University.



The Project

Our task was to create a silicone prosthetic what we need to apply on a body part. Before that, we had a project brief. We had some instructions before we started to plan how and what to make.

Character brief

The members of the cult will become pivotal to the ongoing story arc but

only one of them will be met in the pilot episode. "Cultist 1" is a young

character or any gender or race with one distinguishing mark, the mark

of the cult.

The design of the mark is up to you, I trust your design in this matter;

what is important to me is that it takes the form of a sub-dermal body

modification.

We will find out in episode two that the mark is actually an implanted key

and will be cut out of the body of a dead cultist so it should be large

enough for this to play on camera.

It can be anywhere on the body so you can place it where you feel reads

well, but please restrict it to an area without body hair.


This was very exciting. I felt like, this could be like some expectations from an art design department on a pilot episode of a new tv series. Before I started anything, I opened up one of my books a couple of times at home over the weekend.



The Background story

The cultist1 is Abdul, who was a member of an Egyptian sect. This sect believed that they found a gate to the otherworld in a secret chamber under the big pyramid.  The members of the cult, 'the guards' have an implanted key on the hand, beneath the skin. In the pilot episode, the police find Abdul's body in the river, and the Scotland yard starts the investigation.



Concept Character design of Abdul


I had the background story and a character, so started to think about the design of this key implant.

Ideas:







Making the prosthetic

    I decided to go for the key shape. I think it could be good to use an existing symbol and put it in a fantasy story, mix the reality with fiction like in Indiana Jones or in X-files. First, I started to draw my design ideas.


Concept design of the implant


We started to sculpt the prosthetic in monster clay. During the modelling, I had to realise that, I have to forget all of the details from the key because realistically it would not be visible from under the skin. Moreover, I have to sculpt the skin on the top of it. I made the skin texture with some fine make up sponge. 





We had some moulding and casting and texturing demos from Geraldine and Marin. They were where really interesting and helpful. 
The next step was moulding and casting into the silicone.




The positive silicon cast

The end result

When I had the positive Prosthetic cast, It was ready to apply it on. I decided to put it on a wax hand and make it look like a hand of a corpse.





I have really enjoyed this project and in the future, I will practice on the technics what I have learnt.

I need to gain some good, valuable experience with prosthetics.

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