DIY Majora's Mask
 

SonofV and I both love costumes. We enthusiastically celebrate Halloween, we have a great time going all out for SakuraCon, we just like dressing up, it's fun! This year for Halloween SonofV wanted to wear the mask from a Legend of Zelda game, Majora's Mask. I was happy to hear his enthusiasm and I told him I'd help him, with the emphasis on help. We started in August, and barely completed it in time for Halloween. That's much more about our pace of work than it is about the degree of difficulty.

Ok, to the pictures.

The plan for this mask was to create it from paper mache. It is so big, and has such an unusual shape that nothing else I could think of could be adapted. This would be a scratch built mask. Like most of my projects, this one turned out to be overengineered by a factor of two or more. Seriously, this wire frame just needs to hold up some wet paper. Balloons have done this successfully. But, being something of a paper mache rookie, I erred on the side of steel.

The plan was to make a frame for the rim of the mask. It is basically heart shaped, so we started with one lap of wire, bent into the shape of a heart, then another.

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It's kind of a four-handed operation. The frame is still quite wobbly, but soon it will stiffen up considerably.

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After three laps, we started making crossbars that would outline the surface of the mask. He also modeled where holes for his eyes would eventually need to be.

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As we progressed with the crossbars/wires, we stopped periodically and put it on the table to see how "flat" it was.

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All the vertical crossbars are in, now the horizontal ties. These were much lighter and less numerous. We just needed to keep the vertical bars in place. The frame is pretty strong and getting stronger.

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See the horizontal ties? See the strips of newsprint? See the steel bowl of flour and water the consistency of heavy cream? See the sink? Keep the sink in mind, this part is pretty messy. And... I don't have a garbage disposal to chew up whatever slips down the drain. This stuff is designed to set up like concrete. I *don't* want any of that crap down the drain.

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We wet the strips one at a time (don't waste your time or paper by throwing a handful of the strips in to pre wet them, trust me) squeegeeing the material back into the bowl, leaving a wet but not sloppy strip to lay on the frame.

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At first he just needed to cover the frame, later on he was trying to shape the mask more, especially around the edges. No need to stick to a pattern across the wires anymore, the previous layers of paper mache will hold up the new strips.

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papier mache "pro" tip. Your wire was a good choice. balloons create more work in the main. Chicken wire (hex fence wire) is the best/easiest base I've found

He did the back too, where his face would be. This added a lot of strength and not very much extra weight. See how nice and smooth the edges look?

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Bake.

(This is the part of the movie where the music gets scary. Yeah.)

I kept the heat low, under 250 degrees and the door open. The door open was really a necessity as it wouldn't close with the mask inside. No comments about my well seasoned oven needed, thanks. :blush:

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Once we had a dry mask to work with he needed to add the eyes. This mask is kind of a bug eyed freak, so we made some buggy eyes from wadded up paper and taped them into place.

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They were taped in place to begin with, but now they're being papered over with strips like the rest of the mask.

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This looks great, but I have to say I've never dried the stuff in the oven.... air dry works just fine, but maybe not for the impatient/short-of-time....

Fast forward a long time. The mask project sat idle for a while, and I'd been urging SonofV to get busy. It looked really cool, mask like, but he didn't really understand how much more work was ahead of him. Like painting.

But before he could paint it, he needed a smoother surface to work with. I had him sand the surface of the well dried mask with coarse emery cloth. This knocked off the high spots but it was still not smooth by any measure. I read up and decided we needed a paste coat to fill in. I made it by using about half a roll of toilet paper, chewed, macerated, torn, whisked, boiled and mashed in clear water making a plain pulp.

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To this I added the regular flour mixture and a little bit of water. The result was about the consistency of very stiff mashed potatoes.

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We applied it a dab at a time, smoothing and burnishing it with the back of a spoon.

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Bake.

Cue the humorous music here. Turns out the high eyes were A LOT closer to the upper heating element of the oven. The door was still open and my girlfriend said, "There's a lot of smoke coming out of the oven!" Oh, um, thanks! :facepalm:

The mask is fine, it's not burned, it's wellll toasted and actually smells like baked bread. Ok, baked bread with just a hint of burnt toast. More sanding, just to make it smooth. Really, folks. It's gonna all be covered with paint. Give me a break!

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See? I TOLD YOU they stuck way up!

I think the lighter spots were colder / wetter. No matter, paint covers a multitude of sins.

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Now the spikes around the perimeter have been made and attached and papered on. Something to note here, there are some tinier strips placed on the surface, not near the spikes on the edge. These are little patches that cover rougher spots. I now know that the big strips, while wet, still have some stiffness when twisted over the compound curves of this complex shape. I learned mid-mask that one way to deal with this is to use little patches like this instead of big long strips. One really brilliant idea was to use many small triangles over a surface like this! That's really smart. Of course, you need enough base surface to hold the triangles but they can be tiled with practically no bending and buckling. Noted for future reference!

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Here's a nice little closeup of the spikes on the edge. I started out with a long narrow v of wire that I wound a wad of paper around in the rough size and shape of the spikes. Then I "finished" the shape with masking tape. Then I used the long protruding ends of the v to punch through and wind around the triple wire that comprised the rim of the mask. I say "I" and that's true. For the first one. SonofV did the other nine.

Once they were all wired in place, they got papered on.


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Ok. This was actual fire. I'm guilty of being impatient and under the gun timewise. I wanted to try to cycle two layers in one day. Remember the oversize problem with the bulgy eyes? Yeah.... the spikes... they exacerbated this problem raising the damn mask even higher since I had to put it in at an angle. And.. I might have had a problem with the oven because I had cooked in it this same day. It was already hot, too hot, obviously. I'd set it (back down) to about 250 degrees, but it was still blazing from the cookies I'd made earlier. Just stupid. Lucky, but stupid. Fortunately all the fire was on the inside, and didn't pierce the outer surface except in one tiny place. Where the left eyehole would be. Definitely lucky.

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See the little hole for the left eye? I got lucky. I am *SO* done burning working on this doggone mask. MAKEUP!!!

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SonofV is the painter. I have no responsibility or credit for the purty parts. It's all him.

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This is the other painting in progress shot he took.

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HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

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Verry Cool V and son of V !!

Wait! How did you attach it to his head?

nail gun

...see those double dots down the middle?

Thanks for the confirmation about the wire. It is very solid. I had wire, not chicken wire so that's what I used. Plus I didn't know how I'd be able to make that shape with the flat plane of hex fencing. Dunno, but this worked, this time.

I am guilty on both counts for the forced heat drying. Impatient AND pressed for time. Fortunately it all worked out.

Good question.

The original plan was to attach the mask to a cheap hardhat I'd purchased at Goodwill. The headband would make a comfortable and stable base and the hard shell would provide a solid foundation to attach the heavy mask.

But. We ran out of time. He wound up tying a strip of elastic across the inside of the mask and wore it old skool style, just like those plastic masks we had as kids. A thick headband was a big improvement to protect his forehead. He wore it at school on Monday and answered the door to our little local trick or treaters. It is an impressive mask.

Plan C.

bwaaaahhahahahahahha!