Post-Apocalyptic Wasteland Mask
After a slam-packed spring and summer of 2019 I made the decision to finally make it out west to Wasteland Weekend. As a Mad-Max themed event that prides itself on building an immersive experience out in the Mojave desert, I couldn’t possibly show up without a costume. I’ve always wanted to build armor and props out of bones and animal skulls, and with my daily shop work primarily focused on high polish chrome and gold paintjobs, I was dead-set on going as far in the other direction as possible. This would be a build filled with corrosion and rust, and would look as though it had been through hell and back.
I started this project by pulling down several archives of digital scans of animal skulls. I ultimately settled on the English Bulldog for my base as it naturally has a bizarre skull structure due to the extreme amounts of genetic tinkering we as humans have done to this poor critter. After bringing the model into Zbrush, I modified the skull to fit onto a digital scan of my head in order to ensure a proper fit for the physical piece. I had heard that the wind and dust could be quite brutal out in the desert so I made sure to design the fit in such a way as to seal the mask around my eyes. A balaclava or neck scarf was used to protect my nose and mouth when the wind really kicked up. Bulldogs have such shortened snouts it was practically impossible to modify the skull to protect my nose. I made sure to pack extra sunscreen to keep from looking like Rudolph when not wearing a scarf.
To account for the harsh conditions in the wastelands, I sourced a set of polarized sunglasses for the eye lenses and designed the sockets to fit them. After adding the eye-sockets and several greebles to make things a little more visually interesting, the model was broken down in order to send the component parts to the 3D print farm.
After printing and assembling the various components, the mask got a quick round of sanding to knock down any obvious print lines and seams. Since this piece was going to be so heavily weathered and beat-up it wasn’t necessary to get a glass-smooth finish on the base parts. My hands were very grateful that extensive post-processing was not required on this particular project.
For the paint on the “Goblin-dog” I started with a 2k high build primer to knock-out any of the last few parts that might have been missed in the sanding phase. With a off-white/bone-white base set, I began adding layered color washes in acrylic until this mask looked as though it had been kicked through the desert for the last 100 years. Once the weather washes were in a good place, I applied a liberal amount of iron powder to all of the metallic surfaces in order to create a rust effect. There are several great recipes online for creating this rusting effect using salt, hydrogen-peroxide, and white vinegar. If applied properly with a misting bottle, the oxidation results can be seen in real-time and adjusted according to taste. Speaking of taste, make sure everything is completely dry and inert before wearing your mask. Vinegar fumes can sting your eyes something fierce!
To complete the look, I took a trip down to my local Goodwill and purchased several garmets that could be mixed and matched. With daytime highs closing in on 100 degrees and nightly lows in the 30s-40s it was important to design this costume to account for various weather conditions. My tailoring skills may need some work but overall this costume was quite comfortable and survived 5 days of rolling around in some fairly extreme terrain.
Special thanks to Matt Silva (Blue Whale Studios) for organizing the trip out west for Wasteland Weekend.
A big thank you to Bryan Humphrey (Mad Scientist with a Camera) for the fantastic shots of this build.
If you’d like your own copy of this mask, the digital files are available here - JarmanProps digital store