Di'Jiamin: A Work In Progress

So, I'm starting this project, as I really love doing costuming and make up. I've been out of the competition for almost 10 years now and I've gotten the itch to go back into it. All because I was looking at the picture of Tim Roth as General Thade from Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes. How I got a lizard out of a monkey for inspiration is beyond me.

Step 0 - Formalizing the idea

The drawings started while playing some good, old fashioned, hack and slash Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, 2nd Edition. (Much more fun than 3rd edition when you're in the mood for high end munchkinization!) I may post some of my crude sketches some time in the near future...

Step 1 - Bringing About the Form

This is the first iteration of the sculpture.

This is the first sculpture of what will become the make up appliance. I spent about an hour working on pieces of clay to begin getting the texture I wanted and was not liking my results.

Cheryl, my wife, suggested that I try using some of our leather tools to get the feel I want. So I tooled around with the some presses and Saran Wrap, pushing the clay round, getting some of the file I want.

Admittedly, the texture doesn't really come off as very lizard like, but I'm going to wait and see what happens when I start applying color to it.

Some time later...

Dan Wolcott, a friend of mine who used to work with me, came over to my place last night after a long hiatus at a make-up school in Toronto for a much over due visit, where we chatted and talked about what we were each doing and then asked him to critique my sculpture. I knew there was a reason I was putting off making the negative mold!.

He pointed out where my clay was too thin, gave me an excellent tip on creating really thin edges, and generally helping me work through some design issues. Some of the things that changed was the ocular ridge (where the eyebrows sit) and the nostrils (we moved then up the nose a bit) to try and make the sculpture look more like a lizard and less like a man. We added a couple of flared ridges to the eyebrow area, flaring them in to the bridge of the nose and up away from the temples. The bottom ridge and the idea for a double ridge came from my wife.

I don't have a picture yet of the new sculpture, but I will probably take one tonight and then another one after I apply the new texture to it.

You can see some of Dan's other work on his website, www.livingmask.com. Did I mention that he's an excellent make-up artist?

The next step is to make the other half of the mold, commonly referred to as the "negative mold".