Platsil Gel-10

Recently we have been playing around with using silicone for our effects instead of latex and though we are still a long long way from becoming makeup effects experts we have learnt a couple of things that are useful to know.

THICKENER
Without this the only effect you can achieve is making it look like you got sneezed on by a giant as un thickened silicone is pretty runny and can't be shaped or sculpted at all. This can be a good thing as it is self levelling which means you can get a really nice smooth finish if you can stop it going everywhere.
If you want to make any kind of shapes then a squirt of thickener will let you sculpt directly on to your subject and the silicone will hold its shape even before it starts to go off.

TIMING
Although Gel-10 has a working time of only a few minutes before it starts to set you don't actually have to rush as much as you would think. Five minutes is a pretty long time really so just make sure you mix up batches that are as small as possible and you wont have to race against the clock

COLOUR
Silicone pigment is pretty expensive so we only had really bright, hammer horror red and generic skin pink which was not really any good for what we wanted so we tried to colour it with acrylic paint the way we would do with latex. Bad move.
Silicone does not go off when mixed with acrylic and I spent the entire 2 Days Later film comp with a very sticky neck for this reason. Fork out for some proper silicone pigment and it will see you good for ages as you only need to use a drop each time.

HAIR
We learnt through pain that latex does not come out of hair. Most people who where involved in Loki's Gate suffered a certain amount of involuntary waxing in the process but thankfully silicone is another beast all together.
While you don't want to be just pouring it all over your head it is not as much of a pain if you do get it in hair. It will come off arms without leaving a bald patch and a little vaseline will mean you can go over eyebrows and stuff as well.

PRACTICE
Silicone is really nice to work with but it is quite tricky too so just play around as much as you can. We have used up nearly 2kg of Gel-10 just getting to used to it and other than the wounds we made for 2 Days Later we have nothing really to show for it.
Big thanks to Howard for letting us cover his entire face with the stuff and Stu for going one step further and having his entire head covered including his mouth and for putting up with us accidentally siliconing his eyes shut.

We start filming our latest project on Wednesday and this will feature our first sunscreen silicone work. We will keep you posted on this and hope to have something for you all to see by the end of the year.