Costume Makeup - Applying Molding Wax

Roger Bennett Riggle: Hello! I am Roger Bennett Riggle, a licensed and professional makeup artist and this is our model today, Vanessa Strickland. We are in this segment of creating a scarred joker, a deformed joker, a totally new creation in the idea of the joker, from the famous comic strip from Batman.

So, we are into applying prosthetics on either side of the mouth to look like the mouth has actually been cut and scarred etc, etc and as we have said, we had pre-molded these pieces, so I am just going to lift them off of the palette and I am going to place them where I want them on Vanessa's face. I will start with the left side and this is going to look like part of her lip here and we will make it a little bit coming across like that out to the side and I am going to just circle it quickly with a white pencil, so that we know where it goes. It's also important that maybe you lay this on this side, so you know that that one goes on to the left side and then we will switch to this one, which goes on the right side.

Again, I will come in close to the edge of the lip and I am going to outline where I want to adhesive and now I have a roadmap of exactly where I want that adhesive to go. Now, we go to the spirit gum, don't forget when you buy spirit gum to get spirit gum remover because you are going to need it to take off the spirit gum. Here's my spirit gum applicator with the brush. Again, I wipe it so that it doesn't drip.

She doesn't necessary have to close her eyes this time because I am working below eye level and I am going to paint in the spirit gum in the area where I want the molded wax to go and I am going to take another quick dip and do the other side. I am going pretty far up to the edge of the lip because I want a kind of mold this from the edges of the lip into the molded piece itself, so it looks rather continuous. In other words, we are making a bigger smile on the joker than not, and it will be a deformed smile.

We take our cotton ball and we pull it in half so that we expose the fibers like that, take one of your far away finger and tap into the spirit gum. If you need a refresher, all of this we did when we did the wound segment. In other words the scar is a healed wound and you can see your skin sticking to my finger, see that's when it's just right and you take your cotton fibers, don't forget the cotton fibers helped to hold on the molding wax better because you have multiple surfaces going on instead of a slick surface underneath the piece. You will see the cotton, it sticks to the spirit gum and I quickly want to get this piece on here and I give it a couple of taps to hold it into place, while I switch to other side.

Now, at this point I want to wipe my hands off as best I can quickly and I might even take my palette knife and I will start to mash the edges onto the skin, hopefully without messing up too much of my molding. I want to blend this right into the lip. So that you can't really see it start and I want to make sure I get these edges down all the way around so that it does adhere.

Now, when you are doing deformity, it doesn't necessarily have to be pretty. It can be very, very rough, so all you got to do is to make sure it's pretty much on there that you can make it look very rough and unrefined, shall we say. So, I just want to make sure it sticks on there, but I am not making it particularly pretty.

Now, at this point we are going to a technique that I have not shown you with liquid latex for a joker Halloween costume's makeup.