The making of "The Goat" mask [8]

At this point I can start to understand better how the final project, the final aspect of the mask will look like. At this point I can almost see what the limitations I have with the material.

As you can see in the red part of the mask, there are imperfections. I decided to leave some of them and give the mask a rougher look to it. It isn't that I cant fix things like this, this material is really good for it. But since this is inspired in an animal I thought it would be a good idea not to make it perfect, you will notice this theme further on.
My idea is that nature is imperfect, but at the same time, I want to make everything in this mask very similar, not simply do it any way and call it art, or just put work into one side of the mask and leave the other because it's too much work. It has to look like it is part of the same idea, it just doesn't need to be exactly like the other part/ side on a microscopical level.

Also.
What I can't show you in this project is the work done in between all of this parts, like the changing of ideas, the drawings/ sketches to see where it is going. Since when I started this project I didn’t thought of making a documentation of the project it self, that only came when I found out that some people I showed it to were interested, and also because some of the ideas, and changing of them, were only in my head and sometimes it was while I was walking in the street, never actually taking them out of there.
What I also can't show you is how long each part of this takes. I don't usually time it, and sometimes I come back to a particular part of the mask over and over again, and because of that it's difficult to tell.
Still I can tell you that the first time I do thing takes longer than the second. For example; the holes in this mask, the first was the left eye, it took allot of time and I also cut my hands many times, but with time and effort I found better ways to do it, not just different tools, but different skills like different positions to hold the knife/ box-cuter etc. The second eye was really quick and easy to do, because I had the experience and all the tricks that I learned by doing the first one.

I know this post wasn't exactly a next step on the process, but what goes through and in between the parts I post.

The making of "The Goat" mask [7]

At this point I needed to make holes so I could see and breathe with my nose.

At first I tried to cut it with a knife or a box cutter, but it was no use. It barely made a scratch. So With a heating gun I decided to heat a certain part of the mask and there i could cut it much easier. Ant it worked, but it still wasn’t easy, but I could at least make it like this.

It was very sloppy and it had very sharp ends.

At this point I found small wood carving tools, very sharp and small, great for what I needed.

Now the say I did it was basically the same as before, but in order to make it better, after I made the bigger hole, I would only heat a little of the edges in order to make them a little softer, and I worked the material like that. And afterwards I would heat them again and rub the edges less sharp.

After this it was a working on the holes to make it fit my face better.

The making of "The Goat" mask [6]

Now the next step was to make the upper face for the mask. So, fist I thought on making a mold of my head, but soon threw that idea way, since I had no idea how I would make one with what I had. Than I thought on making a face with aluminium foil and make it over, but soon I came to the conclusion that it was more difficult than I thought.

With playing around with the Polymorph I found that I could pass it through cold water and the outside part of the plastic would become just a little but harder, making it still possible to mold, but not being as hot as it once was, or sticky.

So, first I started to make a flat sheet with that plastic, and still heating it up in a recipient with boiling water. When I managed to get a size I thought would be enough I proceeded by bringing it to my bathroom.

It's hard to see, but there is a plastic sheet in there.

I laid myself in the shower with cold water running, than I took the sheet of plastic, passed it once through cold water and pressed it to my face. Pressing it to become the shape of my face. With cold water it made it hard extremely fast, and I only had to lay there for about 5 to 10 min.

Now I had the shape of my face, and the upper part of face of the mask.

The face mask right after it was made, illuminated from under it

The face mask seen from the inside

Cowboy

The making of "The Goat" mask [5]

With a recipient full of boiling water I started to bend both of the parts I previously made. In this part I had to change the water to heat it again. In order to make it easier I used two similar recipients, this way I could change the pieces living them always in hot water, and then heat he water from the other one.

In the picture above you can see the recipient with the hot water and both pieces of the jaw inside. The spoon is so I could touch and move both pieces without burning myself. You can also see the piece in the left is see trough in the upper part. That is how the material looks like when it's possible to mold.

In this part I had to be careful because if I let the piece till like this for too long it would start to stick to the recipient.

After working on this a while I finally had the form that I wanted. And so, like you can see in the picture above, I dipped the points in the hot water to the point they became to the point of fusion and than I fused them together.

You can see in the pictures above that the union wasn't perfectly centered, but that wasn't a problem because I could make the line vanish by heating it and molding it.

From Within

The making of "The Goat" mask [4]

Now that I had the basic ideas ready, I filled a recipient with hot boiling water put the quantity of plastic that I thought would be enough for the chin.

With it at the point that I could mold, sometimes I took it out and pressed everything together, in order to make a more uniform shape, and closer to how i wanted it.
After some time I got it in a shape that was close to what I wanted. I than passed through cold water, in order to make it become hard without having to wait a long time.

As you can see in the picture above they are about the same size, but the one on the right is a little bit longer.
I made sure they were about the same in every way but I could change it in case it wasn't.

The next point was to put both parts together, but for that to happen both had to be bent, before or after putting'em together.
I decided to bend them first and only after put it together.

And so I did...