Posts tagged "skull mask":
Pro wrestler skeleton costumes for Mardi Gras 2022!
Many months ago while brainstorming ideas for our new Mardi Gras skulls/costumes, my wife had the great idea for us to be skeleton pro wrestlers; we decided to be a tag team, and I came up with the name The Skull Krushers! These costumes were extremely fun to wear for our first march with Cryptique! Here’s how we made our skull masks…
Mardi Gras 2021 — I made a skull mask of my own damn head!
For Mardi Gras 2021, my wife and I made skull masks of ourselves! This was all her idea, and it was super fun to plan out how to do it and then watch it all come together.
Here’s how I made my skull!
Spider skull mask and costume for Mardi Gras 2020! — part 1
I made this spider skull mask and six-armed spider skeleton costume for Mardi Gras 2020! I know, I know, spiders don’t have bones; they got like an exoskeleton or somethin’. Deal with it, nerds. Anyway I’m really happy with how this whole thing came out, and now I’m going to bore you with every detail of how I made it!
Skull mask with dancing skeletons, part 4
This is part four of my skull mask project with rotating gears and marching skeletons. See parts one, two, and three.
Installing the hard hat
Almost all of my big paper maché masks are mounted on a hard hat. Hard hats are great because they’re cheap and they provide a lot of comfort and stability in a big mask. I usually saw off some parts of the hard hat for each mask depending on its shape, in order to reduce weight and to help the hard hat fit in the mask as well as possible. Read more…
Skull mask with dancing skeletons, part 3
This is part three of my skull mask project with rotating gears and marching skeletons. See parts one and two.
Building the skull shape
In part one I built the whole mechanism with the gears inside of a big circular wall; this would become the outer wall of the skull mask at around ear-level (not my ears, the skull’s ears — uh, wait a minute…). Read more…
Paper maché skull mask with dancing skeletons, part 2
This is part two of my skull mask project with rotating gears and marching skeletons. See part one here.
Dancing skeletons
I drew all 29 of the dancing skeletons at a larger size (about 6″ tall) on sketchbook paper, keeping the designs as simple as possible since I’d be re-painting them by hand at a much smaller size. I scanned ’em and cleaned ’em up in Photoshop, reduced them to about 2″ tall, and printed them out. Read more…
Skull mask with dancing skeletons, part 1
Welcome to the newest installment in my ongoing quest to kill myself with overly complicated art projects! For the 20th anniversary of my skeleton group I decided to make a paper maché skull mask with moving parts! Yikes! The mask has a crank and gears and 29 little skeleton figurines representing my fellow skeletons; a sort of best-of selection of our skull masks and skeleton outfits over the last two decades. Here’s how I made the thing!
Axeman skull mask! — part 2
This is part two of my Axeman paper maché skull mask for Mardi Gras 2018; see part one here.
Making the mustache
You may remember from part one I wanted to make the mustache attach to the skull with magnets so it’s removable. Here’s my convoluted process for designing the mustache, getting it to match the curvature of the skull, and getting the placement of the magnets correct.
Axe Man skull mask for Mardi Gras 2018
Here’s my Axe Man skeleton costume for Mardi Gras 2018! The Axe Man was a semi-legendary serial killer in New Orleans in 1918-1919; you can read all about him here. This year our skeleton group designed skulls and costumes based on figures from New Orleans history, to celebrate the city’s tricentennial, so of course I picked the creepiest guy I could find. Here’s how I made his skull mask, and don’t miss my other article about making the oversized paper maché axe prop.
Twin paper maché skull masks
A new project, a new experiment! I received a custom order for a pair of twin paper maché skull masks; the request was to base them on the design of my first Mardi Gras skull mask and keep them more or less identical, and there was a very short timeline to get them both done. So, I decided to try a reusable base! This was a first for me.
Luckily I have that article about how I made that first Mardi Gras skull five years ago; otherwise I probably wouldn’t remember how I did it! Of course it would be impossible to get these new ones exactly the same as that one, but I’d do my best to get them close. Read more…
Wolf skull mask — part 4; making the ears
This is part 4 of my paper maché wolf skull mask; see part 1 here.
I wanted to give my wolf skull some ears; I had this idea because in researching wolf skulls I realized that basically all carnivorous mammals’ skulls look almost indistinguishable, and the main different from one mammal head to another is the ears. So my hope is that adding ears will help people recognize my skull as a wolf (or at least a dog! I’ll settle for a dog!). Read more…
Wolf skull mask — part 3; painting, etc.
Painting the wolf skull
Before painting the wolf skull mask, I applied a coat of gesso over the whole thing. Gesso is a thick white paint-like substance that can help smooth out any imperfections in your paper maché surface. In this case it really helped smooth out the teeth in particular.
Paper maché wolf skull mask — part 2
What big teeth you have!
Hooboy, the teeth were one of the hardest and most time consuming parts of this whole mask project! Like I mentioned in part 1, the four big fangs were made out of foam insulation tubing and masking tape; those were pretty easy. I tried a few different methods for the other teeth; I’ll spare you my failures and just show you where I ended up…
Paper maché wolf skull mask — part 1
I made this here paper maché wolf skull mask for Mardi Gras 2017! It’s got detachable ears, a movable jaw, and it’s one of my most lightweight and comfortable skull masks yet. It was a lot of fun to make; here’s how I did it!
Teeth-making tips for big paper maché masks
In all of the large paper maché masks and heads I’ve made, the teeth are always, always the most labor-intensive and challenging (and sometimes frustrating!) part. I’m always amazed at what a large proportion of my time and effort go into such a small part of the head! I’ve tried a few different methods for making teeth over the years, with varied success. Here are the methods I’ve used, and some pros and Cons:
Making big paper maché masks — advanced tips
In making all my big paper maché masks I’ve learned a lot of important things along the way — things I could only figure out through trial and error, but now that I know about them they’re a huge help in every subsequent mask I make. I’m by no means an expert! I’ve only made four big skull masks so far, and I have two more in the works (one skull and one non-skull) but with each one I can see them getting easier and easier to make and to wear, thanks to these tricks I’ve worked out over the years. Here are some of them…
Cuckoo clock skull mask — part 3
This is part three of my cuckoo clock skull mask project. See part one and part two.
Where were we? Oh yeah, it’s time to paint!
Painting the mask
I painted the clock body and the roof separately for the most part before joining them together. I first protected the screen in the eyes/nose/mouth with blue masking tape (the kind that’s really easy to remove), and then I spray painted the entire exterior of the clock white. I separately spray painted the roof black. I let these pieces air out for about three days outside.
Cuckoo clock skull mask — part 2
This is part two of my cuckoo clock skull mask project. See part one and part three.
Scale-pattern shingles on the roof
I started the roof with two foam board panels. My process for creating the scale-shaped shingles was kind of convoluted…
The pattern on the roof is made with a few layers of craft foam (aka Wonderfoam). I made this way harder for myself than it needed to be! Since all my wall and roof panels were irregular shapes — there isn’t a single 90-degree angle on this whole mask — I needed the scale-shaped roof tiles to start out larger near the top of the roof and get smaller toward the bottom. I ended up designing the whole roof surface in Photoshop, starting with a nice regular scale pattern on a rectangular shape (figure 1). Read more…
Paper maché violin skull mask, Mardi Gras 2015
I made this violin skull mask for Mardi Gras 2015. It was one of the most complicated things I’ve ever made. I bit off more than I could chew with this one, but I’m really happy with how it came out. Check out all these steps…
Paper maché conjoined twins skull mask, Mardi Gras 2014
This year I was determined to give chicken wire another go, after my failed attempt the previous year. I had already sketched out my idea for this conjoined twins (aka “siamese twins”) skull, and I knew I wanted them to be different heights and sort of distorted and curved-looking. So I decided to start out with two big tubes of chicken wire.
Read more…
About Manning Krull
How to make a 4-foot paper maché alligator
Three-headed paper maché dragon sculpture