Hi all, I'm brand new to the world of making prosthetics and had a couple questions about the process. I have the materials to make a plaster life cast of my face and was planning on sculpting the prosthetics onto it with clay, creating a negative plaster cast of that sculpt, removing the clay from the life cast, and then pouring silicone into the space between the negative with the sculpt and the positive without.
My first question is am I overcomplicating this? I see people sculpt onto either a life cast or generic model head and then just paint latex over it, but those always seem to come out kinda lumpy and strange. Is there some easier way of making facial prosthetics that look nice?
My second question is regarding the logistics of creating the negative mold. First, how do you keep it contained? Do you pour the plaster into a container and then dunk the face with the clay into it? Do you build up around the prosthetics with clay to create a wall and pour the plaster on top? Most importantly, how do you make sure that the plaster being used to create the negative doesn't stick to the plaster of the positive? Do you just spray the positive life cast with a couple coats of mold release or spray paint or something? And how do you go about getting all the clay out afterwards?
Again, I'm completely new to this and just watched a bunch of Face Off as a kid lol. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, my plan is to create prosthetics for almost my entire face so I can be a gargoyle. Thanks in advance!