a very quick and miscellaneous piece as an experiment to see how a skinned human look might be easily achieved :)
[How did I accomplish] the skinned one? It's very easy. I just used acrylic paints, the kind for school children (ie: non-toxic). There's a particular brand here in Australia sold in tubes at newsagencies, and most of the colours are very opaque and it is real smooth to apply. Sometimes i mix a little latex in the paint to give it flexibility.
Acrylics wash off fairly easily from skin, and a base of Vitamin E cream first puts some minds at ease (i don't bother). Anyone worried about this can use the more expensive grease-paint.
Reference books on human anatomy can help for deciding where muscle and bone should be (again, i think i didn't bother here as i was more interested in effect than accuracy, it was just an experiment).
The pic on the right shows that it looks a lot like a freshly peeled face. Just smother clear hair gel all over the make-up. I recall that the gel does wet and remove the paint, so some sort of fixative to the paint would be ideal (as a goth we used to use hair-sprays to fix our make-up), or perhaps greasepaints would work in this instance, especially if filming under warm lights. Hair gel does dry, so reapplications are necessary after some time, or perhaps experiment with "wetter" agents like personal lubricants?
And, of course, this is just a simple paint job. Using some basic prosthetics from costume stores to create more pronounced cheek, brow and chin bones could work. Only shallow ones though or the eyes look too sunken. In a dark filming environment painting the tip of the nose with blacks may make it look more skeletal and unformed? I've painted half my torso away with black paints against black backdrops for photos and it is really effective and so simple to do, tho' a photograph is easier to control.
I've always found experimentation is the key, and use simple household ingredients. Don't pay a fortune for fake blood. Mix red food colouring with chocolate syrup, and add toothpaste or peanut butter to thicken as desired. Gelatine mixed with only very small amounts of hot water and dragged across the skin with a blunt tool creates effective scarring, which is also easily painted (if needed). Those two things alone don't even cost $5 and provide heaps of material to work with. That skinned being was done in about 10 or 20 minutes and cost about $5.
I hope some of this helps for your productions :)Dakanavar
