Since my brother was the one who conditioned me into becoming the nerd I am today, I thought I would honour his birthday with a little tribute to The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. I remember playing countless hours of this game with him. More of less meaning countless hours of watching him actually playing it while I swapped in to play the songs on the ocarina for him (I couldn't handle the "scary things" like Dampé's Graveyard or the freakish moon).
I was initially planning on making an entire set for him with the Deku, Goron, and Zora masks included, but I didn't expect the amount of time and effort I would have to put in for making Majora's mask... It's those individually carved spikes... What a pain in the keester...
So without further ado, I'll show you how I made a mask for my brother so that he could become evil, take control of the moon, and destroy the world!
For this project, I needed:
- One Styrofoam Disc and a couple extra styrofoam blocks for the spikes (I thought about using wood or possibly even clay, but for the sake of saving time and money, I went with foam)
- A utility knife
- Wood carving tools
- Newspaper
- Flour
- Water
- Mod Podge (i used gloss, but matte could be a cool finish too)
- Acrylic paint
- Paintbrushes
- Hot glue gun
- Scrap paper and black marker
- Sandpaper
Step One
I made a rough sketch of the mask on a sheet of scrap paper just to get an idea of how large I wanted it to be and how the shape should be cut. Since I get supremely confused when working with three dimensional projects where I have to take away instead of add on, I went over the outlines that needed to pop out in the mask with a permanent black marker so I wouldn't accidentally cut into anything important. At one point I tried to tape the scrap paper mask onto the foam in order to trace everything out, but the foam was too slippery so that method was quickly thrown to the wayside.
Step Two
Once everything was marked out, I took my handy-dandy utility knife and started cutting out the main heart shape. A word to the wise if you are looking to try this DIY... the foam will be EVERYWHERE. it stuck to my desk, the floor, my tools, and to me in general. Since I wanted the mask to be as smooth as possible, I sanded the entire thing down with sandpaper after I was done carving just to eliminate the look of the foam's bubbles. Also, I suggest using a screwdriver as a part of your carving kit. Since foam is easy to poke into, I used the flat edge of the screwdriver to make a lot of the smaller lines in the eyes.
Step Three
Once all of the main carving was done on the front of the mask, I took my extra foam blocks and carved out ten, identical spikes. I'll be honest, this part of the project almost drove me insane. I sat in my room for hours sanding down ten, silly, little pine cone shaped thingamabobs... Anyway, once they were all even and my sanity returned, I carved small holes in the side of the mask in order to securely wedge the spikes in.
Step Four
I took the spikes out for convenience for the next part and for utter fear that one of them might break. Then, I flipped the mask over and carved out the back so it looked more like a mask than a foam block. Since there were holes in the side I had to be careful not to make the walls of the mask too thin. Once that was done and I had another lovely pile of green foam stuck to me, I hot glued the spikes back in to make sure that they were in securely.
Step Five
Here comes the fun part! Paper mache! I will never be too old for paper mache. Art Attack set me on the path of glorifying paper mache ever since I was a wee one (90's kid reference, pay no mind). There is no exact ratio for making the paste so I just added enough flour in water until a nice "pancake batter" formed. The trick here is to use very tiny chucks of paper in order to avoid the cheap "peel away" look of dried paper mache. Also, I had to make sure the entire mask was dry between coats so that no mold would have a chance to grow.
Step Six
Once the mask was completely dry, I sanded it down for the last time just to make it as smooth as possible. Then it was painting time! I just used a variety of different acrylic paints (aka whatever paints I could scrounge up from my art room) to mix and match the perfect colours for the mask. You can be as careful and meticulous as you want when carving, but the real look of your mask is going to come from how well you can paint it. Take your time to achieve some steady, professional looking lines in order to make the mask look authentic. My mask took two coats of paint and one top coat of gloss finish to give it that "this is totally made out of expensive wood and not cheap foam" kind of look.
TAH DAH!
And there you have it folks, how to make Majora's Mask! If I ever get around to making the other masks I'll upload them in another "Let's MAKE" blog.
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