We are now moving on to pre-painting your prosthetic.
If you want your application to be fast on site then you need pre-paint it for sure
For this section we are going to use acrylic paint which we're going to mix
with liquid pros aid to make a type of paint called PAX
We will also need a plastic cup with alcohol and some brushes
The first thing we are going to do is remove the flashing
Now while we are doing that I want to remind you that pre-painting is optional
You can paint your prosthetics after you apply it too with just some Ben Nye Makeup
But for LARP I would definitely recommend it
as it will save you a significant amount of time on site
You might also notice that I have two sets
of prosthetics here. The light pink is a set made from our prosthetic transfer
material while the darker set is made using primarily pros aid cream
The only real difference is the light pink one has Cabosil to thicken it while the pros
aid cream obviously does not because Pros Aid cream is already thick
So you can see the Cabosil makes the prosthetic quite a bit more opaque
unless, I found out, if you leave it in the dehydrator for maybe like two days
then it will get transparent. I don't know why that is but that's true
the next thing I'm going to do is put the smaller prosthetics on a white background
then take a flat, maybe angled brush and dip it in alcohol to dissolve the edges
of the prosthetic a little bit. You really wanna get it as close to the
sculpted edges possible without biting into the edge too much and you're just
going to do that all around
alright so once you have your edges nice and close you're going to want to gently
dab it off with a rag because alcohol activates the pros aid and that will
make it sticky again. So you want to make sure you remove the alcohol completely from the prosthetic.
it looks like we are now ready to paint.
I'm going to start with a nice warm reptilian green. To do this I'm going to
use a combination of Liquitex and golden paints. But the brand isn't as
important as long as you use a high pigment paint. So any of your higher
quality acrylic paints will be fine. Make sure you keep track of which paints
you're using. Now since we are making lizard scales and going to start out
with a lighter green. Like applying makeup to your face you want to try and
start off with a color as close to nude as possible. Then go in and focus on your
darks and highlights.
I'm going to add some liquid Pros Aid into a container cap and mix it with
some of my paint
you going to have to mix Pros Aid in order to get the paint to adhere to the prosthetic.
This mixture Pros Aid and acrylic paint is actually called PAX paint
Cosplayers have a tendency to just use it straight on their skin
because it stays all day but that's really really bad for your skin.
If you keep watching larphouse I will show you a better way to paint your skin so that
it stays all day, but please don't use PAX just straight on your skin
So now we're going to start in the middle. For these particular appliances we're going
to want to fade it into the color of the skin. So I'm being really careful about
blending it so that the outer edges are still the flesh tone.
You can get pretty close and you do want it to be thin and not too opaque
But that is just for more realism.
If you're following along and you have the light pink prothetics
like the ones we sell your going to want to stretch your paint all the way to the
edge or use makeup to blend it.
Eventually we will add more highlights and texture.
But for the first coat you're just going to want to tint it to get your base color down.
It can be a bit heavier towards the middle but we really want it to have nice and soft edges.
Acrylic paint also dries darker than it looks when it's wet and it's double true with pros aid mixture
This is because pros aid starts out white and dries clear
((Time lapse with Music))
Also remember since we are using Pros Aid in our paints, if you need to clean your brush you can dip it in a cup of alcohol instead of water.
I'm going to add a little bit more white for our second coat.
Now I have a tendancy to mix too much paint and that's just my style.
But if you happen to mix too much paint and have a spare tiny tub you should try to store some for later use.
it's always better to save materials when you can
((Music continues))
Okay, we are mixed and ready to go so lets begin our second layer.
With each new layer we are going to use a little less of the Pros Aid and give us a more opaque color.
This works because our previous layer acts as a primer for our PAX paint to stick to.
((Music continues))
I tend to use my finger as a blending tool.
It works well for me but your hands can get a little bit sticky.
What also works is having a brush with no pigment in it if you don't want to use your fingers.
((Music continues))
This mixture is getting a little bit minty for me so I'm going to add a bit of yellow.
Generally speaking you should never just add white to a paint
If you want to lighten something up.
Consider the tone you're going for and add yellow or blue or purple or whatever until
you get the desired color. It helps to know how light works a little bit.
If you add just white it's going to make it look dead and flat
If you don't want to use these on your cheeks and forehead you can try attaching them to other body parts
like your shoulders or forearms or on the back of your hand
You might even try extending the look by having dark lines extending from the edges along your chosen body part
This is where you will really see the benefit of prepainting
since applying these will only take about ten minutes on site
you will have more time to add those extra details.
So let's clean our brush in alcohol and pop these in the dehydrator for about fifteen minutes.
It's been about fifteen minutes so let's begin our next coat.
it's always a good idea to rotate your piece and make sure you're getting everywhere you want to get
So our painting job looks good.
Let's pop these back into the dehydrator for fifteen more minutes before we begin our detail work.
Okay, everything looks good so let's begin that detail work
I'm going to start with a small paintbrush about the size of an eyeliner makeup brush
and we're going to want to add some cool colors for depth.
So let's get some blue to go in between our scales.
((Music continues))
I'm also going to use my finger and a larger flat brush without any paint for blending.
As we paint we want to create darker colors towards where there would be shadows obviously
But if you find you're getting too much paint on your brush you can try an attempt to spread it around the shadow areas
I'm going to eventually paint the area around the ridges completely in
but for now I'm going to focus on the rest of the scales
((Music Continues))
You can see that by adding the shadow detail we've already added a lot of depth to our prosthetic
((Music continues))
The next thing I'm going to do is back over the scales and check to make sure that I have clean edges
it's always a good idea to check and make sure you have clean edges.
((Music continues))
So we've got pretty good--
--basic mid-tone here.
Its a--
Just do the same thing to these.
So now I'm going in with the dark darks.
We're going to use a bit of yellow and brown to contrast the cool colors and make it
look more black without the deadening effect that Black has unless you're
going for like a film noire look for something
if you want you can extend the brown shadows off past the scales
little bit to give the illusion of it blending into the skin.
((Music continues))
It's time to add highlights.
Let's begin by liquitex iridescent gold to our green paint and create a green tinted gold
We can lighten it up a little bit with yellow
next begin adding small amounts of it to the tips of the scales
try and focus on the larger portions to the center and then blend out from there
((Music continues))
If you can see a slight difference between this one and this one.
This one doesn't have highlights on it yet and this one does.
Its subtle but worth it.
You can see how I continued some of the darks off to give the illusion that the scales are blending into the flesh.
But I'm not going to carry the highlights out to the edge.
You really need to learn to artistically curate your detailed work.
I mean if you're going for perfect realism then sure do detail work till you freckin' pass out
But I mean we're painting dragon scales on our face. Let's everybody just calm down.
((Music Continues))
the next bit I am going to do is entirely optional. I am going to add the tiniest touch of straight gold
and that is because I'm going to do these ridges in gold
and I it to carry through.
once this dries it will be like true gold
I'm only going to do it where the highlights are but I think I'm also
going to bring the gold out to the edges that is because I've decided these gold
sparkles our dragon freckles and Dragons should be glittery
a side benefit of this is that it should be easier to blend into your face with makeup
just add some gold speckles to your face and it should help smooth the transition
Just don't put acrylic paint directly on your face
You can already see that they're drying here and adding a really nice sparkle.
Before we start painting our ridges in gold we're going to want to put down aslightly darker color first.
Shimmery pigments tend to be best used to show off highlighted areas rather than highlighting them themselves
It's time to pop them back in the dehydrator for another fifteen minutes.
Now that the paint is dry lets add a slightly lighter coat without covering the base.
We want to have a darker color clearly visible at the bottom.
And that is Pre-painting Pros Aid transfers.
Let's stick that in the dehydrator for a bit until it's totally dry