Prepping the prosthetic

Having left the silicone inside my mould to cure over the weekend (not necessary - it could have been opened after a few hours had I had the time) it was time to crack it open. I left it to soak in water for about 10 minutes before attempting to pull apart the pieces. The back right piece came away easiest, although there was a little difficulty in getting the ear piece out of the mould. The back left piece came off next, however, I really struggled to get the front piece off, now matter how long it soaked in water for. In the end I had to get assistance from 3 other people, levering the head out very gradually with a long pole inside the head. The real problem proved to be around the chin area, which was stuck inside the mould. It was necessary to then feed my hand down the side of the mould that had come free and very gently pull the silicone out with the tips of my fingers as the head was even more slowly lifted out. By some miracle, nothing ripped, however, I later noticed that the chin and neck had stretched out of shape and now hung off the face rather than clinging closely to it. Another problem that I came across was trimming off the long sausage of silicone that ran along the length of the piping up to the top of the head. Unfortunately in trying to remove it a hole was made in the top of my prosthetic. Thankfully, this was not a major issue as my actor will be wearing a wig, however, this will require a lot of practise to prevent it from happening in future on a piece that will perhaps not have this factor to fall back on.

Once the piece was safely out of the mould it needed to be released from the head and powdered both inside and out. Where the silicone had seeped up into the small gaps between the pieces of the mould, large flaps had formed around the seams. These needed to be carefully trimmed off as close to the head as possible and then seamed. This required mixing up a small amount of A and B with pigment and spreading the silicone evenly along the seams, leaving to go tacky and then re-texturing to blend into the head. In order to achieve a smooth seam edge, this process was repeated 4 or 5 times.