Video Games Tutorials and News - Venom Mask With Moving Mouth. How To Make
Eyes lungs pancreas, so many snacks, so little time. This article is sponsored by Anchor. Today I'm going to show you how I made a venom mask with a realistic moving jaw. This mask is not only a display piece, but if you want to wear it on your head, it's really easy. It just splits apart into two pieces like that, and that way you can easily slide it over the top of your head.
And in case you're wondering, yes, you can see out of the mask, which is pretty cool. This was entirely handmade from scratch using mostly aluminum foil and tape, and you don't need a head cast or a head mold or anything to make this, so it's actually a lot easier than you might think, so let me show you how I did it.
The first thing I did was cover my head in aluminum foil and tightly press the foil into my head to make sure it was form-fitting. In order to make the foil retain its shape, I covered it in masking tape. This will give me a good starting point for the mask. Now I cut out a bunch of strips of cereal box cardboard, but you can use pretty much any kind of cardboard for this, and I'm going to hot glue on a bunch of strips of cardboard until the whole thing gets covered.
This doesn't have to be perfect; it's just to add some structure, so I'm basically just winging it and trimming all the pieces as I go. I'm going to use this floral stem wire, but any kind of wire will work. You could use a coat hanger or something like that. I hot glued the wire to some corrugated cardboard and then trimmed off the excess wire with a wire cutter.
This is what I'm going to use to make the jaw. As you can see, I can bend the cardboard into the shape of the jaw and the wire will help the cardboard stay in whatever shape I want. I mixed up some five-minute epoxy and used that to attach some neodymium magnets. These magnets are basically going to be the hinge point between the jaw piece and the headpiece.
If you don't have neodymium magnets, don't worry. Later on, I'll show you an even better way to do this without magnets. Alright, well now we're gonna bring back the aluminum foil, and we're basically just gonna tape on a whole bunch of aluminum foil onto the jaw piece, and keep adding more and more layers, until it starts to resemble the shape of the chin, and as you'll see.
I used a box cutter to chop off any excess material that I didn't want. Don't be afraid to make this jaw piece super big and fat and bulky, like that you actually want it to be big so that there's enough room to put all the teeth in without having the teeth poke your face. I added a rope of aluminum foil around the edge there.
That's pretty important if you want your venom to have lips, and on the jaw piece, you'll see there's a little platform, which is going to allow my chin to control the movement. As I was building this. I realized that adding all of that aluminum foil actually made this jaw piece heavier than I thought it would be, which is a problem because the magnets aren't able to hold that much weight.
I think I have a solution, though. I've gone ahead and removed the magnets. And instead of the magnets, I think a better idea would be to use these snap fasteners. These are pretty easy to find. I got them at Walmart, but you can also find these at fabric stores or on Amazon. These two pieces can snap together tightly, and they spin with very minimal friction, so they are perfect for making the moving jaw.
After removing the magnets, I glued on the snap fasteners, using 5-minute epoxy. And I was so glad to see that these worked way better than the magnets. At this point, I started bulking up the head using more aluminum foil and tape. To me, it looks like the head is not really like a perfect sphere but rather the front of the head kind of comes to a bit of a point, so I would suggest making the front of the head a bit pointier, and that.
I think, will make it look more accurate. Also, just like we did on the jaw piece, we need to add a rope of aluminum foil for the lips, and you can either tape it on or super glue it like I did. It doesn't really matter. Also, it kind of goes without saying, but make sure you leave enough clearance for the jaw to be able to open and close right there.
As you can see, the mask is very thick right here where the eye holes are because of all those layers of aluminum foil, so I had to remove some material from the inside of the mask, and that way the white part of the eye will sit more flush with the front of the mask rather than being recessed inwards.
See, now it's a lot thinner and hollowed out from the inside, and when I place something behind it, it'll be flush, which is exactly what I want. Now I'm not actually going to be able to see through the white part of the mask. I mean, if I wanted to. I could use a mesh for the eyes, but I was more concerned with making the mask look good and making the eyes opaque more so than being able to see clearly out of it, so I decided I was going to use this perforated vinyl, which has small, discrete holes in it, and I'll be able to kind of peek out of those holes here.
I used a hot glue gun to add some texture to the mask and make it look like there were some veins popping out and muscles and whatnot. I think I might have gotten a little too excited with the hot glue gun. I went a little overboard. In hindsight. I kind of wish I hadn't added so much hot glue because the mask turned out to be a little too wrinkly, but well, using a mixture of about 60 percent white glue and 40 percent water.
I am now going to paper mache the whole entire mask. I'm using puffy paint here, which if you aren't familiar with puffy paint, it's kind of like a unique paint that dries three-dimensionally. The idea here is that the puffy paint should hide all the seams of the paper mache since the puffy paint will be slightly raised from the surface.
Also, the puffy paint is pretty glossy, which is another good reason to use it here. To make the teeth, I'm going to use a new material I've never used before. This is called polymorph thermoplastic. Basically, what this material is a moldable plastic. It comes in beads and you basically melt it with hot water, so when the plastic is heated it will turn clear, and once it cools down it will turn white again.
As you can see, I made a whole bunch of teeth in all various different sizes and shapes. To attach the teeth to the mask, I'm going to use a mixture of liquid latex and flour. Basically, I just gradually mix in small amounts of the flour little by little until I have a thick consistency, like this.
You kind of want to work fast when you're doing this because you want to make sure that the liquid latex doesn't dry before you get a chance to insert all those teeth into the gums. You can make the teeth look a bit more realistic and accurate by adding shades of yellow and brown, which will make the teeth look more like real enamel instead of just being super pearly white.
