I wanted to try my hand at making a decent Myers H1 mask, so based on some recommendations here, I picked up a Trick or Treat Studios Elrod Mask. I figured it was an affordable mask to learn on and would teach me a lot before I do a more in-depth mask project.
I found one on eBay but it took forever to get to me due to the slowest shipping known to man! Regardless, when it was finally delivered, I was excited to see what this mask looked like in person. I opened the box and was immediately bummed. I don’t know what I was expecting, I had seen the 'Before" photos, and the official TOTS marketing images of the mask pretty much show you what you’re getting. But somehow the disappointment was more real when I pulled the thing out of the box. What immediately struck me was how small and seemingly far apart the eye holes were (giving the mask a dopey expression), the dark brown ‘hair’ (it’s really fur) is really bad in my opinion, and the overly shiny/uniform white paint masks detail and feels cheap.
I’ll admit, it was hard to be excited with all of these issues staring me literally in the face. So last night I decided to do something about it. I tore all of the hair off and started to mark out my new eye hole cuts with a pen. I used several shots from H1 where Nick Castle is holding the mask to try and avoid any stretching that would impact my eye hole shapes. I’m pretty happy with how they look, but when I cut/Dremel I’ll go slow and probably tweak a few of the curves/angles that even now I think could be a bit better than my pen work. Here’s a shot of the mask this morning:
I’ve got to find some naphtha or equivalent (I live in California and I heard it was banned years ago) to prep the surface for new paint, and I want to see if I can find/order some hair for this mask today so that I’ll have hair ready by the weekend.
Can anyone recommend an easy method for stripping the remaining glue off the scalp without harming the mask? I figured I’d ask before I experiment with potentially incompatible solvents.
This is what’s preventing me from buying an Elrod to convert. Just seeing it in hand and seeing how silly it actually looks. Though I’ve seen other conversions and they can actually come out pretty great so it’s not a bad base to start from.
Your eye guides look good to me, like you said start slow and take off a little at a time.
I don’t know what to suggest if you can’t find some Naptha or Lacquer thinner where you live. I’ve heard other people just cleaning with soap and water to remove any oils to prep for paint.
Looking good so far man. I’d hold off on worrying about the excess glue for now. Many people just hair over what’s left and I’d hate for you to damage the mask by attempting anything. When I got my Hospital mask stripped the remaining glue was damn near a part of the mask ay that point
My thanks to both of you for your feedback. I started cutting away some of the material with curved scissors (to reduce Dremel time).
As a side note, I also thought I would measure my Elrod copy around the head (just above the ears) and I get a diameter of 23 and 3/4 inches. I don’t know if that’s a useful data point for anyone else wondering what it means when they hear that the Elrod is “small”, but I believe that’s in the ballpark of the original DP Kirk masks. Please correct me if my research has that wrong.
Hmm, that’s really odd. I just saw that my image link is broken, and I went to check my web host, and somehow the image is not in the folder? I didn’t delete it either. That’s never happened before. I’ll re upload it when I get home. Sorry for the broken link until then!
Good luck with the painting. I repainted my elrod and the new paint peeled right off. So then i went to strip the old thick, shiny paint off and it was bullet proof. Then after much soaking and washing and scrubbing it finally started peeling off, but then even going slowly the paint managed to tear the mask and i ended up throwing the whole thing out. The old paint was insanely bonded to the mask.
Wasn’t a good day. I don’t know what kind of industrial brutal paint they’re using but I’ve never seen anything like it. My h2 and hospital look the same too. Thick and shiny and not very good.
Did you scrub the factory paint job with Naphtha prior to laying down your new paint? Was your new paint job (the one that peeled off) rubber cement based?
Last night I wrapped up the eye hole cuts. I think they turned out ok. I used curved scissors and a Dremel and went a little bit at a time, checking my work as I went. under different lighting conditions. Overall it wasn’t hard work, just slow as I was trying not to over cut them.
My copy does not have holes in the ears, nor does it have the mouth slit. I’m thinking of doing those next. Any opinions on those?
Small update - I cut ear holes and I filled the knitting needle hole in the neck. I just wanted to go for a version that doesn’t have that hole detail since it’s specific to the just the end of the film. I decided not to cut the mouth slit. Personal preferences on this one. So here’s what those steps look like:
In case someone reads this and wants to know what steps I took, here’s how I went about filling the neck hole:
I used Naphtha to scrub off the cheap looking TOTS red blood paint that was around the hole.
Then, I scrubbed both the inside and outside latex in/around the hole with Naphtha to prep it for filling.
I put a piece of clear packing tape over the hole on the outside and then used a little bit of liquid latex applied from the inside to just barely fill it in. I kept this first layer fairly thin at first so that I could use a hair dryer to speed up dry times.
I repeated this 3 times until the hole was slightly over filled on the inside.
I removed the tape, and sponged on some more latex on the outside to help blend out the patch.
I let everything dry over night and used the Dremel this morning to smooth and feather it out.
Finally, I rubbed it down with some more Naphtha and applied some baby powder to keep it from remaining tacky.
I may still need to smooth it out some more, but we’ll see.
I spent a lot of time prepping the mask yesterday. I went all along the TOTS hairline and removed glue residue and hair in case I want to deviate from the Elrod hairline when I go to lay down the new hair. It was tedious and required naphtha, scrubbing, and plucking. It ate up a bunch of my painting time.
I then scrubbed the whole mask with naphtha prior to mixing up my first color. For paint, I’m using rubber cement as a base/binder, thinned down with naphtha and I’m using oil paints to pigment the mixture. I started with a pale orang-y flesh tone just to get coverage. Today I’ll be going back to warm up some areas as well as give it an overall tanning before laying down the white. Here’s what I got:
Alrighty folks, it’s too quiet in here! I don’t know if everyone is super busy working on their Myers stuff (like me), but I hope you’re all having fun as Halloween is fast approaching. Enjoy:
I spent most of today working on the ‘white’ paint. I ended up with a mix of Titanium White, Silver, and just a hint of Yellow Ochre. I sprayed and sprayed… and sprayed. Once I was good with coverage, I did use some naphtha on a Q-Tip to tweak some transition edges and to pull some paint off the lips. I also sealed the whole head with a misting of Krylon Crystal Clear Matte (I still need the surface to have some tooth for the weathering). I had enough time this evening to complete a dirt/wash pass with Burnt Umber acrylic paint, and I also hit the eyebrows with some super thinned down Charcoal Grey acrylic paint.
I’m going to continue my light dirt pass with a darker color next, probably a 50/50 mix of Charcoal Grey and Black acrylic. I plan to get the wear on the neck to look more grungy. Plenty of paint detail left to do, but this is the fun par tot me.
Looks to be going pretty good so far man, I am not artistic at all in any way lol. I want to rehaul a tots mask but I know I will royally fuck up the paint, whenever I had to paint for school I never tried lol. I might paint some models and stuff and work my way up to a mask, if I end up not wanting to keep it I want to at least make my money back [emoji38]
Thanks for the kind words. I know you say you aren’t an artist, but I bet you could surprise yourself. Maybe practice on a cheap mask you don’t need/care about. With Halloween almost here, no doubt there will be latex masks on sale/clearance to nab for practice. I would recommend that since the process is somewhat different from plastic models. Good luck on your projects!
Really digging the work you’ve put in so far man. The eyecuts look great and I really like the direction you’ve went with the weathering. Can’t wait to see this bad boy haired and finished up! Awesome to see you taking your time on this. It truly shows
Looks good so far. Thanks for posting and including everything even small details. I myself am doing this to an elrod and its my first complete rehaul as well (ive just repainted a few) so this is very useful info. I too want to close the knitting needle hole, and this will be my first time hairing a mask, so look forward to seeing that progress.
