Metals Meets Horror

Here's another mask under development at Frightworld: America's Screampark. The mask itself (like all of the masks at Frightworld) has been a great example of team effort. It was designed and created by Arick Szymecki, Andrew Lavin, and myself. When it comes to this particular mask, I really just did the metalwork on the back of it, and a little bit of touch-up coloring and washes.

Here's a picture of the metal buckles used for the mask.

When I originally made the brass buckles for the mask, they seemed far too pretty for a mask worn by a serial killer. I rebuilt them without my usual attention of detail, craftsmanship, and overall clean-up. I allowed firescale to build up, and when it wasn't enough, I re-torched the metal to get more. I used coarse files and sandpaper to mess up the surfaces, and went back in with Silvaloy solder to make globs on the metal. I then used an amonia wrap to patina the firescale on the blue/green side.

This is the mask that received the buckles.

Since the mask has a bit of a green hue, thanks to Andrew Lavin's paint job, and a brown/yellow hue, thanks to Arick Szymecki, the brass with a patina blends nicely. The nice thing about the patina is that it makes sense with the character of the mask. This mask is thought the be the mask of a basement-dwelling, canibalistic serial killer that basically lives in a stew of human remains. The patina itself is done with amonia, but can also be achieved through humanly fluids such as urine. Really, technique met theory and story in a way that is so subtle that it will likely remain unnoticed by guests. It is, however, a small detail that I can take pride in when addressing accuracy and thought.

See you space cowboy....