Unit 1 (C & D) Arts Events: Special FX workshop

So many of these arts event reviews are from things I did at the V&A, but it's my favorite museum and they run such excellent courses. In November I went to a one day course on special effects, it included prop making in which me made replica coins from Pirates of The Caribbean out of resin with the woman who made the props for the London Olympics and Paralympics, an animatronics workshop/demonstration with the guy who built the animatronics for the recently released movie 'War Horse', the TV series 'Being Human' and many more things besides and last but not least -and my favorite- a special effects make up class with the lovely Florence who did the make up for 'The Woman In Black' movie (which, consequently, had terrified me for weeks until I met her) where we got to create silicone cuts, scrapes and burns and covered ourselves in fake bruises.

I gained a massive amount of knowledge in just a few hours, though mostly from the prop making and make up workshops. The animatronics one wasn't brilliantly organized and is kind of a blur, though that may be because I just get hands on things more.
During the prop building one I got to ask so many questions about resins and tints which was super helpful because I've wanted to work with resin for months so that I can create sturdier components and more realistic jewelery for the costumes that I make. It was such a beautifully simple material to use and I garnered so much confidence from just that one hour it's insane.

Special bronze powder applied to the inside of the silicone mold. This colours the outside of the resin.

The resin. With a blue tint in it so that the bronze powder shows up and makes it gold.

One of my finished coins. I made two!

The woman leading it also showed us some of the props she made for use in the Paralympic and Olympic opening ceremonies; including Miranda's giant magnifying glass and a book of fairytales that one of the children in the hospital beds scene used. We also made fake wood using thick acrylic paint and special scrapers with a wood grain pattern in. I didn't realise this, but that's how they age up doors and desks and all manner of things, the people doing them for that though must be really talented, 'cause mine looked pants.

The make up workshop was bundles of fun. Florence had a really enthusiastic, light delivery and looked no more than twenty four which was encouraging since it's a similar industry which I want to go into. Firstly she showed us some examples of prosthetics that could be used more than once, a couple of moster-ish face masks and a fake arm from a 'Casualty' episode that would supposedly spurt blood on command.

Then we got to have a go ourselves, Florence and her assistant set up a about five silicone guns and would squirt just the right amount of toned silicone onto your skin for the cut that you wanted to make. Then you had to model the silicone into a shape that resembled a cut and would blend with your skin on the edges. Once you'd done that and it had set you could colour it with cream paints and alcohol tints, I also added some shards of siliglass -silicone glass- to mine!

My cut before I added the alcohol tint to redden up the "skin" on either side of the bloody gash.

After the alcohol tint!

The next thing I tried out was a burn, for this the silicone was perfect because you could just smush it on and then stipple with the tool to create the lumps and bumps, you didn't have to worry too much about getting it neat or smoothing the edges down into the skin. Once it had set I added some alcohol tint to stain sections of it red and called it finished!

After making the burn I didn't have too much time left for anything else so I gave some bruise powder a go. This stuff is genius, it's full of different sized molecules of powder -red, blue, yellow, purple- so that it looks red in the pot and when you first dab it onto your skin but then after rubbing it in a bit it starts to turn blue, then purple and yellow as the molecules break up at different rates. It's so clever! You can get so many different gradients of bruise from one powder!

It's showing up red-ish in the photo, but it was actually far more purple. I blame the lighting.

I had sooo much fun at these workshops, they were interesting and well led by people who really knew what they were talking about. They even made me consider other facets of the movie industry that I would happily call a future career, though I will always love costume I still need to study prop making, animatronics and make up because I'll often need to coordinate with those departments whilst making costumes.

V&A workshops for nineteen and unders are usually around £15 in price, and as I've found are just as good as the ones for adults (which often run into the hundreds!), I would strongly recommend them!