Week 9 Reflection - HNC

After finishing up the final runs of our silicone moulds and doing the last minute touches of our pieces, I think that I am ready for our assessment next week. I’m super happy with today’s progress; I had my tutor, Karen, look over my portfolio to check that all necessary information has been included and then printed off all of my pages and placing them into my flip folder along with my written essay.

In the practical session, I started out by de-moulding some of our silicone prosthetics that we ran the week prior before then powdering them as usual and setting them out on the board. After this we then got the Vaseline and release spray and prepped all of the flat moulds ready for layers of cap plastic to be painted before then running the silicone. While my fellow students were also doing this; I decided to finalise my general ideas of what pieces I wanted from our collection of runs (the best ones and ones that weren’t so good). I would then paint them ready for next week.

I decided to use one of my existing ankle pieces that I wasn’t 100% happy with for a practice application. Unfortunately due to applying it on myself, I didn’t think about how awkward it would be trying to adhere it and dissolve the edges trying to bend my leg back on itself. So with a helping hand of Kate to adhere and blend the botttomsection of the piece. I then finalised the colouring, blood and other effects. After I applied the initial red alcohol colour, I decided to add a deeper red shade of alcohol paint along with a black to give a dried blood effect before then adding foundation on top of the piece to match my skin tone. After this, I then went in with coagulated blood and dripped that all in broken skin sections before then getting a liquid blood and dripping it out the piece.

I think that the overall application went super well - using a new spirit gum I’ve found that it can blend edges quite easily when used in close relation with the acetone.

As well as this I found the foundation and alcohol colours really helped it look realistic. When it came to finally adding the blood and finishing touches, I found that the toothbrush splatter effect wasn’t working how I liked so I decided to take a pair of scissors and cut away at an old fan brush and turn it into my stipple brush for SFX. I found that this worked so much better and made it more precise rather than scattering the spray colour everywhere. I also found that this helped when painting my other bullet wound pieces.

With those other pieces I used the sale alcohol paint shades of a yellow toned skin colour, dark red-dried blood colour and then finally a black to give the charcoal burnt look that occurs in a bullet wound. Kate and I plan to go over to Health and Social Care next week and patch test the students that are taking part in the simulation event to ensure that everyone is patch tested for the adhesive and remover of choice.