Making the alien

I was watching some old black and white sci fi 'B movies' over the weekend and was struck by just how much they were able to achieve - alien costume wise - with what they had back then. They had tiny budgets, no CGI and limited technology. The same can be said for early Doctor Who monsters. So I decided to make a wearble alien mask out of junk for minimal cost. 

I started with cardboard. It's a great material and there's always lots of it about. I cut out basic shapes for a front and back, stuck them together and tried them on for size.

I made sure the eye holes lined up with my own eyes and then covered the back in scales/tiles of cardboard. Then I got out the glue gun and added lots of googly eyes and small polystyrene balls (I have bags of them in my junk box left over from a monster making workshop with local kids). I then realised that trailing hot glue over the surface would also simulate veins so I did a bit of that. Then I sprayed the whole thing with grey primer, then black, then a zenithal highlight in a kind of dark military green.

The eyes were next. It was my only purchase and it was under a tenner. I bought some clear acrylic plastic 'fill your own' two piece Christmas tree baubles. I found an image of an iris online, changed the colour to a bright green and then printed it it onto paper.

Then I carefully cut it out and stuck it on the inside of one half of a bauble. I then used a Sharpie to draw on some veins and then sprayed the entire interior of the dome with white.

The final thing to make was the mouth. I had some old foam pipe-cladding so I cut some wedges out of it so that it would fold into a mouth shape and glued the ends together. I painted it bright red with a mix of acrylic paint and PVA. Then I spray painted a piece of card black and attached it behind the 'lips' and made teeth from polystyrene packaging.

A little touch up here and there and some highlighting of veins in pink and I was done. Here's the final assembly. 

I know. Pointless and silly. But fun.