Extinction Agenda

Yes, that's a simple dinosaur mask I made for Adriana's dinosaur themed party. Whatever. I want to make an example post for the blog and this is the most recent thing I've done. Plus, dinosaurs are cool. If you got a problem with dinosaurs, then we're gonna have some problems.

Due to procrastination, I pretty much had to create this mask in a time span of two hours. I knew I wanted something that would function as a mask, but at the same time not obscure my face. A cutout from Bristol would be simple enough to complete within the short amount of time before the party. I originally wanted to have a mask on either side of my face. Then I realized my vision would be tunneled like horses that draw carriages. So the one side sufficed. I was also going to have the mouth open but decided against it since my face would be visible and to save time on cutting the shape.

I did a quick sketch of a nonspecific dinosaur (I guess it's most similar to a Tyrannosaurus) on Bristol. I marked down the areas where I wanted textures and simply colored over the lines with darker shades and filled in the spaces with lighter shades. I wasn't thinking too hard about where the highlights should be for the render. I did the same with the color palette. I can't really tell you why I chose peach, yellow and gray for the teeth. I just wanted it done fast.

I'll be honest, I'm not that great with markers. I'm certainly not ready to plunk down a couple benjamins for a set of Prismacolors. It's good ol' Crayola for me. I tried to limit any use of black and instead relied on darker shading to give it a more realistic look. I know more research is revealing that dinosaurs had feathers and brighter coloring, but again, time was a factor.

I taped a shoe lace to the back side of the mask so I could tie it around my head. I made sure to cut a curve into the mask's neck so that it could fit snuggly when it rubbed against my shoulder.



The mask ended up working nicely at the party. If I had more time, I would've added more of those white highlights on the scales. Overall, it did what it was supposed to do. The mask looked convincing enough from one side and if people were going to talk to me, they could clearly see my face at the proper angles. The textures kept it from looking flat.



The colors even popped pretty well under a black light.