- I know that this is actually
a relatively small head,
so some of the projects that you do,
if it's like a full sized human head,
is obviously is gonna take a lot more,
so that's something to be cognizant of.
So I'm putting these together,
and if you look really closely inside,
I don't know if you can zoom in on that or not,
you can see where the seams are
that are bringing it together,
and I'm gonna do my best to get those buttered up.
That's looking pretty good.
All right, so I got them pretty well put together,
and now I'm just gonna do some spot supergluing here.
Gonna grab some accelerator.
If you don't have accelerator,
one neat really cool trick
for isocyanate glues is to use baking soda.
So you'd put some glue on,
and then you would just put a teaspoon,
just heap on the baking soda,
and it makes instant plastic.
It's a pretty cleaver trick.
I should probably be wearing a respirator to do this,
but I'm taking a break from my respirator.
- [Man] And we do have a fan
right next to Craig blowing out the fumes.
- A big open garage door on the other side of me here,
so there is actually plenty of ventilation
coming through here.
One of the things Stan Winston would do is...
Let that sit for a minute.
Stan would invite Cal/OSHA to his shop,
and they would bring great big bags, like laundry bags,
and then you would put on your mask
and they would stick you in this bag,
and then they would but this nasty,
it was harmless but nasty smelling chemical in the bag,
so if you had a beard like myself,
and it leaked through,
there's no way you can keep
from coughing and hacking and stuff if you breath this gas,
and so this was a test that he would do periodically
by inviting the Cal/OSHA people over
to do tests on us
and make sure that our respirators were working correctly,
and I'm pretty sure he took great joy in that.
But it is, safety is so important.
I've seen a lot of my colleagues,
one guy, who was like
one of the number one sculptors in the business,
worked for Rick Baker for a couple years,
and all of a sudden because of his exposure
to all of these chemicals,
became allergic to everything,
and he even had to leave the industry.
He became allergic to things like milk and stuff,
and it was all due from exposures to stuff
that we would do in the early '80s,
like using a lot of fiberglass.
There was a lot of hot melt vinyl that was going on,
like the stuff that fishing lures are made of
is stuff that comes in like a white milky form,
and you would heat it up in a double boiler,
and it would melt and become hot melt vinyl
at about 150 degrees Fahrenheit,
but at 160 degrees Fahrenheit, it would burn,
and at that point would give off toxic fumes,
and just a couple of whiffs of that
would make you very sick.
So we really were dealing
with a lot of nasty things back then,
and it took its toll on a lot of people, so.
With that cheery note... (laughs)
Let's go on a little bit.
All right, so I'm gonna just brush some of this
along the seam.
- [Man] So talk to us about this process
and what you're looking for,
how much of an overlap, everything.
- Well, since we took the fiberglass
right up to the edge,
all we really need to do is just get 'em bonded together,
and so I'm just putting one layer in there
with the resin first,
and that should be pretty much enough
to keep everything stuck together.
It's sort of like a ship in the bottle time for this.
All right, so...
And if you can't get it all, if you run into problems,
like for instance this mold is almost impossible
to get all the way into that inner mouth,
but if you can just get some of the epoxy
dripped into that area, you'll be doing okay.
You can also, since most of it will be,
it'll all be bonded together when you take it apart,
you can also do some of it after you pull it apart,
you can put it back together.
- [Man] Paul would like to know
if you could've waited until after the two halves cured
and then bonded them together after
with a tape layer on each side, inside and outside.
- Yeah, I could've,
but I'm relying on the overlapping of these two molds
to give me a nice, snug fit between the two of them.
Yeah, the tighter control
that you can maintain on this stuff,
the better off your final product is gonna be.
- [Man] Remember, your goal
is to preserve the integrity of the art.
- Of the art.
- [Man] And not distend the art or change the art.
That's what everyone signed off on,
and if, when it comes to put your under skull in there,
if it's bulging out oddly, you've ruined the art,
so it's really important to get this right.
- There was a great story
about a classic Hollywood icon movie character,
I'm not gonna say who it was,
and they decided to put mechanisms inside the head
but they didn't have enough room.
It was a vacu-form head,
so they heated up portions of the vacu-form head,
and they distorted the vacu-form
just to add a little bit in the couple of bumps
so that they could get more room for their servos.
Unfortunately, the character didn't have any hair
or anything like that,
so when he put it back together,
this character ended up having bumps
on the back of his head, and the director was furious.
- [Man] It looks like James Wright
knows the character you're talking about,
but we're not gonna say it out loud.
(Craig laughs)
Can anyone confirm James' suspicions
about which character Craig is referring to?
- [Craig] I'll throw you a hint.
Okay, I won't hint. (laughs)
- [Man] All right, where are we at now, Craig?
- All right, so I'm gonna go into the lower part of the jaw
and butter that up, and then we're good.
I'm just getting the lower jaw buttered in here.
One thing, here's another idea.
You can always thicken up epoxy...
I'm just gonna let this sit here so it flows to the bottom.
You can use micro-balloons or Cab-O-Sil
and mix it in with your epoxy
or polyester resin or whatever
to make it more of like a buttery coat,
and you could also butter,
you could literally like butter the stuff into it
to build it up in places
where you may not be able to get the cloth in
because of the angle,
but I'm not really worried much about that
because I know it's all gonna be sealed together,
so when I take it apart, it's gonna be one piece,
and if there are any little gaps there
I can always fix those
when I start cutting the head up,
'cause obviously we're gonna cut out eyes
and we're gonna cut out the jaws,
and once we start cutting those pieces out
we'll be able to get access to those little parts
that may not be getting their full coating all the way,
so it's not really anything to fret about.
So that's it.
At this point, I'm just gonna let this cure
for the next 24 hours before pulling it apart,
and you definitely will end up
most likely destroying this plaster bandaid mold
taking it apart.
After that, I will take some 120 grit sandpaper
and I'll do a little bit of sanding on it
to sand down any of the little bumps,
and then I'll follow that up with some 400 grit sandpaper
just to make it a little bit smoother
in the places where it may not be smooth,
and that's kind of where we're at now.
So we're just gonna let it sit here
and come back in 24 hours.