Sunday, May 14, 2006

project fish mask

objective:
my first attempt at costume making for jennie's first directing play w/ the brooklyn playwrights group . there’s a fish theme to the play, and one of the characters serves a conniving and deceiving role. so, i thought, what better fish than the angler fish! a deceiving monstrous fish that lures its prey towards itself with a mesmerizing luminescence attached to the end of its ‘antenna’. the fish is black, you see, thus, disguising itself in the murky waters. and the prey only draws so curious to this dim speckle, until it gets too close and snap, it’s dinner poo poo platter!

challenges/procedure:
ok, the 4 nights crunch time was definitely a challenge! but, with some instructions on how to make a paper mache mask, we pulled through. using a balloon as a template and sketching board, layout a thin layer of newspaper strips dipped in a water/flour mix. several layers later, voila! after drying, whip out several spray cans and let your imagination run wild like picasso! top off with a blob of styrofoam to make the eyes and you’ve given some definition and character to your fish. jennie made two masks, whereas i focused on my baby, the angler fish mask.

features:
ok, so i went beyond picasso, and geek einstein kicked in. i thought i wired the mask up with some lights! after all, it is the signature ingredient to this monstrous beast! and heck, if i’m gonna give him a lit angler, why not light up his eyes as well!
i took 3 x-mas light bulbs from jennie’s x-mas decoration kit, hooked it up to two aa battery pack, and ran wires up and down, through the nose, through the eyes, and all around the internals to get this thing lit. look at this thing, isn’t it just one ugly motherf#$@#. oh, and you’ll like this. the “on-off” switch was merely two small binder clips. you clip one over the other, thus closing the circuit, and you got yourself light! edison should’ve been there to see it.

summary:
no encore per say, but it sure was an audience pleaser, a director pleaser, a cast member pleaser….and heck, i’m pleased.
project fish mask: pass!

2 Comments:

At 1:33 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

I love the angler mask! My son wants to be an angler fish for Halloween so I must embark upon its construction now. How did you make the teeth?

 
At 9:10 PM, Blogger wiL-shAkes said...

hi christine, tried emailing you back, but weren't sure of your address. in any case, the teeth were simply cut to shape from a manila folder (the kind you find in any office supplies), then glued in place (regular Elmer's glue would do just fine).

 

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