Thursday, 28 January 2016

Starting the Unit: Make-up in Motion

Starting the Unit: Make-up in Motion


In this unit we have been given a task to research into a chosen novel from the 19th century and then recreate one of these characters in our own interpretation whilst still relating it to its time period. I have chosen the story of ‘Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde’ as explained in the previous blog is a novel about a scientist who wishes to separate his bad side from his good by creating another form of himself which he portrays as Mr.Hyde to the outside world. This plan of separation has its ups and down and eventually goes terribly wrong when his evil outer ego takes over his body forever causing a death by suicide. To kit start this unit I had to prepare my own set of research to present to the class in a five minute presentation. 

 In the presentation I split the mood board into three sections; Characters and why I had chosen them, Mood of the book and ideas I have captured from it and the story line. I have only included smaller details of my reasons which I will further explain on this blog post. I have really enjoyed this story and believe it is a perfect story for me to study as I love special effects and I really feel I can show my talents through this unit. In the three point I will now explain my research and first hand interpretations that I have captured considering I had not seen any TV series or film of this book I felt that this was better as I could only interpret the novel through the words of the book and leave the ideas of character design up to my imagination. On the other hand, as I study further into the novel and design idea I wish to study into the film and see if this will inspire me with other ideas and see/understand how other create minds interpreted these characters.  
 Chosen Characters and why?
In the story/novel and in mood board I have stated that in some aspects the reader of the book could interepret that the characters are of course the same human (as we know towards the end of the novel) but almost acting as a split personality. The characters are shown as good and evil but again to the readers they may believe that the author Stevenson could have interpreted them as having some sort of mental illness like bipolar and schizophrenia (explain in bipolar blog). Stevenson also uses these characters to show a type of representation in humans that every human has an alter-ego that hides within them, while most of us portray a more polite outer side to the outside world and that different people can control this more than others. The reason for choosing these characters is that in the book at the introduction we are shown to believe that they are two different people but at the end of the novel we find out that they are one person. I found this concept very interesting and I liked that they were both complete opposite ends too each other and I believe when recreating these characters I will do it as one. As we will be studying more special effects I wanted to choose the part of the novel when Mr.Hyde takes over Dr. Jekyll's body without his control and also has some sort of flesh/monster half taking over his body, like bipolar does. The last aspect that I have written on my mood board is the characters descriptions which I have included in another blog

Dr Henry Jekyll: 


 Dr Jekyll is a doctor who is highly respected in his community and friend with Lanyon (physician) and Utterson (lawyer). He is also a man of a good finical income, known for his decency and charitable nature, however not living up to personality as much as Mr. Hyde embodies evil. However, Jekyll has always engaged in corrupt behavior therefore through experiments’, trying to separate his good from evil creates Mr. Hyde.


Mr. Edward Hyde: 

Hyde is violent and cruel man compared to Dr. Jekyll and is seen as an image of pure evil in some sort of ‘human’ form.  He is seen by others as an ugly and deformed man but everyone cannot explain why he is like this. Mr. Hyde really represents the dark side and has a pure hate for anything and everything which was first shown when he is seen running over the young girl. Overall, he represents evil and creates fear for everyone that encounters him. 


Moods And Descriptions I have Captured:
In this part of my mood board I am writing about parts of the novel where I have captured more in depth meanings in the novel which I believe will help me with my character design and give me a better understanding of the book. I first found that Dr.Jekyll created Mr.Hyde to separate his bad from his good as to control it or do bad acts without feeling guilty about his actions. He is also trying to hide this bad part of himself from society making me believe why he has called his other self Mr.Hyde (like hide meaning hiding from society). This quote I found from SparkNotes :'Jekyll asserts that “man is not truly one, but truly two,” and he imagines the human soul as the battleground for an “angel” and a “fiend,” each struggling for mastery'. states that Jekyll believes that your body is fighting against itself and contains an angel (the good) and its fiend (the bad) but as we know at the end of the story that Hyde takes over his body does this mean that his angel has been destroyed and that evil conquers over evil. When Mr. Utterson first see Mr.Hyde for the first time he describes Mr.Hyde as 'Undeniably, ugly the man seems deformed' I found this shows how people in the nineteenth century were very judgmental. In the novel I understand that Mr. Hyde is meant to be seen as a ugly monster but this reminded me of other illnesses like human deformities. As many people in the 19th century did not really understand deformities and what they were many would judge and call them freaks of nature because they did not understand. From this quote this wanted to make me research into deformities like the famous film the 'Elephant Man' which could hep me get a better understanding of how people felt about this. As well the deformities could be really interesting to research into to see how I could included this aspect of deformed parts of the body and how to recreate them with make-up, as I believe this could be very interesting as a concept. Overall, the mood of the whole story is very dark but also very psychological due to the two characters and how they are portrayed.


Story line:
In the mood board I have included the story line as to explain the great story of 'Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde' but I have included the full story as well from the another blog post. In the story there where so many interesting interpretations that I have found for example again the signs of mental illness portrayed through Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde. Many people may believe that the main characters are Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde but I believe that Mr.Utterson is as with out him in the story we would not know the secrets of the scientist, as well as Mr. Utterson narrates the whole novel and is the main character in the aspect as he is the story teller.  


‘On their weekly walk, an eminently sensible, trustworthy lawyer named Mr. Utterson listens as his friend Enfield tells a gruesome tale of assault. The tale describes a sinister figure named Mr. Hyde who tramples a young girl, disappears into a door on the street, and reemerges to pay off her relatives with a check signed by a respectable gentleman. Since both Utterson and Enfield disapprove of gossip, they agree to speak no further of the matter. It happens, however, that one of Utterson’s clients and close friends, Dr. Jekyll, has written a will transferring all of his property to this same Mr. Hyde. Soon, Utterson begins having dreams in which a faceless figure stalks through a nightmarish version of London.

Puzzled, the lawyer visits Jekyll and their mutual friend Dr. Lanyon to try to learn more. Lanyon reports that he no longer sees much of Jekyll, since they had a dispute over the course of Jekyll’s research, which Lanyon calls “unscientific balderdash.” Curious, Utterson stakes out a building that Hyde visits—which, it turns out, is a laboratory attached to the back of Jekyll’s home. Encountering Hyde, Utterson is amazed by how undefinably ugly the man seems, as if deformed, though Utterson cannot say exactly how. Much to Utterson’s surprise, Hyde willingly offers Utterson his address. Jekyll tells Utterson not to concern himself with the matter of Hyde.

A year passes uneventfully. Then, one night, a servant girl witnesses Hyde brutally beat to death an old man named Sir Danvers Carew, a member of Parliament and a client of Utterson. The police contact Utterson, and Utterson suspects Hyde as the murderer. He leads the officers to Hyde’s apartment, feeling a sense of foreboding amid the eerie weather—the morning is dark and wreathed in fog. When they arrive at the apartment, the murderer has vanished, and police searches prove futile. Shortly thereafter, Utterson again visits Jekyll, who now claims to have ended all relations with Hyde; he shows Utterson a note, allegedly written to Jekyll by Hyde, apologizing for the trouble he has caused him and saying goodbye. That night, however, Utterson’s clerk points out that Hyde’s handwriting bears a remarkable similarity to Jekyll’s own.

For a few months, Jekyll acts especially friendly and sociable, as if a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. But then Jekyll suddenly begins to refuse visitors, and Lanyon dies from some kind of shock he received in connection with Jekyll. Before dying, however, Lanyon gives Utterson a letter, with instructions that he not open it until after Jekyll’s death. Meanwhile, Utterson goes out walking with Enfield, and they see Jekyll at a window of his laboratory; the three men begin to converse, but a look of horror comes over Jekyll’s face, and he slams the window and disappears. Soon afterward, Jekyll’s butler, Mr. Poole, visits Utterson in a state of desperation: Jekyll has secluded himself in his laboratory for several weeks, and now the voice that comes from the room sounds nothing like the doctor’s. Utterson and Poole travel to Jekyll’s house through empty, windswept, sinister streets; once there, they find the servants huddled together in fear. After arguing for a time, the two of them resolve to break into Jekyll’s laboratory. Inside, they find the body of Hyde, wearing Jekyll’s clothes and apparently dead by suicide—and a letter from Jekyll to Utterson promising to explain everything.

Utterson takes the document home, where first he reads Lanyon’s letter; it reveals that Lanyon’s deterioration and eventual death were caused by the shock of seeing Mr. Hyde take a potion and metamorphose into Dr. Jekyll. The second letter constitutes a testament by Jekyll. It explains how Jekyll, seeking to separate his good side from his darker impulses, discovered a way to transform himself periodically into a deformed monster free of conscience—Mr. Hyde. At first, Jekyll reports, he delighted in becoming Hyde and rejoiced in the moral freedom that the creature possessed. Eventually, however, he found that he was turning into Hyde involuntarily in his sleep, even without taking the potion. At this point, Jekyll resolved to cease becoming Hyde. One night, however, the urge gripped him too strongly, and after the transformation he immediately rushed out and violently killed Sir Danvers Carew. Horrified, Jekyll tried more adamantly to stop the transformations, and for a time he proved successful; one day, however, while sitting in a park, he suddenly turned into Hyde, the first time that an involuntary metamorphosis had happened while he was awake.


The letter continues describing Jekyll’s cry for help. Far from his laboratory and hunted by the police as a murderer, Hyde needed Lanyon’s help to get his potions and become Jekyll again—but when he undertook the transformation in Lanyon’s presence, the shock of the sight instigated Lanyon’s deterioration and death. Meanwhile, Jekyll returned to his home, only to find himself ever more helpless and trapped as the transformations increased in frequency and necessitated even larger doses of potion in order to reverse themselves. It was the onset of one of these spontaneous metamorphoses that caused Jekyll to slam his laboratory window shut in the middle of his conversation with Enfield and Utterson. Eventually, the potion began to run out, and Jekyll was unable to find a key ingredient to make more. His ability to change back from Hyde into Jekyll slowly vanished. Jekyll writes that even as he composes his letter he knows that he will soon become Hyde permanently, and he wonders if Hyde will face execution for his crimes or choose to kill himself. Jekyll notes that, in any case, the end of his letter marks the end of the life of Dr. Jekyll. With these words, both the document and the novel come to a close.’ – (http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/jekyll/summary.html


















Wednesday, 27 January 2016

Ageing:Latex

Ageing: With Latex

Kit List:

  • -        Supercolour
  • -        Brushes (old)
  • -        Concealer palette
  • -        Fine angled brush
  • -        Latex
  • -        Hair dryer
  • -        Translucent powder
  • -        Acetone
  • -        Stipple sponge
  • -        Old age Stipple
  • -        Barrier Cream
  • -        Kabuki Brush


In this blog I will be writing about how to perform an ‘Ageing’ Technique on a client and the skin. This method can be used in film, Tv, threate and many more to create any person to look older with only using a couple of materials. Before making the ‘Ageing’ makeup with a client the first step is to test the product on the clients skin on the under part of the arm as to see whether it reacts on their skin. After testing if the product is suitable for the client and their skin we can begin the process of ageing the skin with make-up. To prep the skin use the ‘barrier cream’, which is a foamy liquid which helps keeps moisture and prep the skin ready for the latex. When you know what part of the skin you would like to make look old either get your client to stretch the skin with their hand and then using the stipple sponge, stipple on a small amount of liquid latex into the desired area, (but take precautions around areas with hair e.g. hairline, eyebrows etc and also around the eyes). For the next step, while the client is still holding their stretch skin use a hair dryer on a cool temperature and dry the latex until it is clear. After the latex is clear push the skin together it should appear wrinkled, you can also add more layers of latex on top to until your own desired look. Then you can continue this all over the face or what preference you would like and then apply a loose powder over the latex to take the shine away making the latex more realistic. Then to finish the look and make the skin look more realistic you can use acetone with a cupid bud and smooth out the edges of the latex to make it blend into the real skin. As well if the skin types does not match you can use a beauty blundered and blend on a foundation of your choose. Finally, to finish off the look I added in darker shades of concealer within some creases to make the creases look more deep set and more aged. Another helpful tutorial/video that I find was the 'Glam and Gore' YouTube star 'Mykie' which within this video  she demonstrate a similar technique of old aged stippling. As well I enjoy her video as she demonstrates this all over the face and shows how she ages the look further using; eye shadows, cream paints etc which I believe will really help me improve on this look and help me if I wish to use this technique in the future. 



Removal:

To remove the latex and the make-up without hurting the client the best way is to remove with warm water and a flannel. Using this technique will cause the least amount of pain as possible. Other options of removing latex and prosthetic are; moving your face around by making funny expressions to loosen the product and also using isopropyl myristate and a flat brush to push it through the latex until it loosens and removes the product. If you press link, I have link in a video that explains how to use this removal product.  






Reflection:


When completing this look I really enjoyed the process of creating an aged look that I could produce quickly and effectively. I found the process of applying quite easy as I have used latex many times before and know how it works but I do know that it can be quite temperamental at times. To improve on this look next time I may try using this technique all over the face to see how the look would turn out. As well when adding in more detail and darken the wrinkles with concealer I may use moister over the top to smoothen out the concealer which will make the skin look more realistic and less cartoon like. I may this this technique for my chosen character as I could imagine it would fit in quite well considering my character ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde’ are seen as two people I want to bring them together as one. Therefore this method and technique would be very helpful to show the old and tired Dr. Jekyll which I would add in another details to make it look more like his character.  

Sunday, 3 January 2016

Disorders:Bipolar

Disorders: Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

From the start of the novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde are seen as one character as Dr.Jekyll just wishes to control his menacing other half but then towards the end of the novel we almost see him as two people instead of one. Some readers may think this as the two sides of the character becoming so un-alike from each other they almost become there own person, therefore making the reader almost believe this. As the characters become more and more un-alike from one another the novel portrays the reality of real peoples emotions stating that many have split personalities that may not be able to control. Mentioned in my previous blog that the characters could have been portrayed as having a mental disorder like bipolar which the author have interpreted through the novel and the characters. I wanted to studied further into mental illnesses and disordered like this to fully understand what the two sides of the characters could be based on and what how I could adapt this to my character. 




Mental illnesses:Bipolar

Bipolar disorder (manic depression) is a mental illness that cause people to have extreme high and low moods and changes in energy through either; sleep, thoughts processes and behavior. In this disorder people can have extreme highs, where they feel very happy and then extreme lows, where they can feel very sad and alone. However between both these extreme moods they can feel normal emotions like any other person and the extreme moods are like high/low 'poles' relating to it name bipolar. The meaning of 'manic' (which is the 'Highs') also describes the feeling of being very excited and confident which are sometime encouraged with reckless behaviour meaning that they may make quick decision. Over effects that can happen during this can be hallucinations meaning the person can see and hear things that are not really there causing them great confusion. Comparing, the illness it says that it has extreme emotions relating to Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde's characters as both of them are one extreme emotion/traits of the other which the other could have based the characters on. The opposite of the highs is called 'Depressive' (the "lows') are the symptom when the person has feelings of extreme sadness and depressions. Unfortunately, most people with bipolar tend to have these symptoms of depressive more than manic (happy). 


Symptoms of Bipolar Disorder?

Bipolar, again is a disorder that cause extreme high and low moods that can happen at any point and can be unexpected. Its starts they can feel one mood for even a short or long period of time before switching to the opposite mood and depending on the person depends on how extreme the moods are, how long they last and how severe it becomes over time.
Some of these symptoms can be:

Mania (the highs):

  • Extreme moods of happiness, hopefulness, and excitement
  • Sudden changes in mood from being joyful to being extremely irritable, angry, and hostile
  • Restless
  • Bad concentration and can speak rapidly 
  • Increased energy levels meaning less sleep 
  • high sex drive
  • Making quick and sometimes big decisions
  • Can cause abuse to others due to alcohol and drugs

Depressive (the lows):

  • Being very sad
  • Low energy levels 
  • Emotions of being worthlessness
  • No longer enjoying passed activities 
  • Bad concentration levels
  • Uncontrollable crying
  • Finds it hard to make decisions 
  • Irritated 
  • Need a large amount of sleep
  • Insomnia
  • Attempts of suicide and death

Conclusion: 

In conclusion, I am happy that I have researched into this mental illness as it give me a better understanding of the disorder and can also help me further relate it to the novel of 'Dr.Jykell and Mr.Hyde'. I decided to research into it as in the novel the main character Dr. Jykell splits his personality by taking a pill to make his darker, inner self be revealed and I believe that this story-line/character can relate to the disorder. As the characters have a almost split personality I know this relates to bipolar as explained above in the systems they can have mania (the highs) like Dr. Jykell and the depressive (the lows) like Mr.Hyde shown as two sides. Other similarities to this is like in the novel when eventually Mr.Hyde takes over Dr.Jykells body this can be like bipolar too as they are more in the depressive state then mania and most of the time it takes over. I will also research into deformities as well as mentioned in my previous blog.