I am sorry to do this again gang, but studying for finals and finishing touches on studio projects had to be my focus this week. But I know some of you wanted to see Selkie bite the shirt thief, so I thought it would make a fun sketch idea.
I also like the occasional 4th-wall joke, so here is the process by which child actress Paula Winters prepares for a day on the set as Selkie Smith:
1. Paula arrives ready for a day on set!
2. Paula’s hair is tied back and her ears and nose stuck back with tape. A “Selkie-Blue” latex headwrap is placed on her head.
3. Makeup is applied to blend in the latex wrap.
4. A Latex Selkie Nose is applied with spirit gum, and more makeup is applied to blend.
5. Paula’s eyes are darkened with a water-soluble non-irritating coloring spray. Green cat’s-eye contacts are applied.
6. Tooth caps are applied to create Selkie’s fangs.
7. A Selkie Wig is chosen and attached with more spirit gum.
8. Paula Winters has been transformed into Selkie Smith!
Next time: Character actress Ellen Hopswith discusses the challenges of portraying Andi McClellan, Lillian Haversham-Zhang, and Barbara Fairweather.
As long as this is the direction you’re going in, I’m happy to wait. No offense Dave, but I’m far more interested in seeing what happens with Selkie than with Todd and Andi. But you’re the one in charge of this show, proceed as you see fit!
Wow, I had no idea all that was necessary. You just see the finished product up there on the silver screen.
I have a whole new appreciation of Ralph Fiennes. They had to take his nose off completely, you know.
it was a combo of cgi and building up the rest of his face to make his nose disappear. creeeeepy.
No no, right off. Great big knife. Ralph has a terrible agent apparently.
Yeah, makeup is an intensive process. For a character like Selkie to appear on screen, it would take a makeup crew most likely anywhere between one to three hours to apply all the steps Dave described to Ms. Winters, depending on work load, crew size etc. Additional time would be needed for hands (latex claw tips, adhesive, makeup) and feet (latex webbed feet coverings, adhesive & makeup). In most cases, the contacts would be applied last, as opaque sceleral lenses like that have a nasty habit of blinding actors if left in too long.
Hmm, I thought they put the contacts in before doing eye work. Good to know about. 😀
I’m unfamiliar with that actress, Dave. I guess I better go look her up:) But I am familiar with make-up and special effects and you did a good job describing it:)
Before reading your comments, I had no idea what numbers 1-8 meant;
but I was pretty sure that #6 meant Selkies teeth grew like a sharks!
Oo! That’s a good point, do they? Sharks’ teeth grow a certain length then are shed for a new set periodically… I think.
They have rows of teeth, one behind another, that lay down flat to their mouth and gradually curve up. I think there’s six rows? Anyway, two rows are standing up: the main teeth, and the first replacement set, so when a shork loses a front tooth there’s one right behind it to take its place. This happens fairly often; they always have a new last set growing as the oldest set falls out.
My 8-y-o wants to be a marine biologist and study sharks. This info from half-remembered kids’ science books.
That’s a fine ambition. How’s the young ‘un’s mathematics?
…she may or may not be able to comment on this comic due to the spam protection. But we’re working on it!
If it’s any encouragement, I left school in ’83 with no qualifications in mathematics. I went to college in ’98 to finally pick up a GCSE, and one thing led to another. Turns out all school did was teach me to mistrust my maths instincts, which are pretty good after all- PhD good.
I lecture on the math degree now, but as I used to tell the foundation-year students, anyone can pick up enough maths for their chosen topic.
I have to say that your work is really not my normal cup of tea, but I am really enjoying it! I caught up from start to the current post in less than an hour and eagerly await your new posting!
This was pretty cool, but I can’t wait to get back to the regular comic again!
Yay! Biting time! ^_^
But… “Selkie-Blue”? “I´s nots blue. I´s periwinkle. It´s prettiers.”
Colours get new names all the time. “Selkie-Blue” would make sense on a make-up set for certain character. Even if it was periwinkle.
Yep. Artist’s quick tag on the tube: character name, vague color discription. 😉
Real life takes precedence; this I know from hard, cold experience. Don’t sweat it, your storytelling is worth waiting for.
Ok I’ve been scratching my head over this for a while now and I’ve just got to ask. Dave, what exactly do you intend Selkie to sound like? For some reason I’ve always pictured her having a really hoarse sounding voice. Aside from her accent does her voice sound like a human eight year old girl? Or is she completely different from either of those?
Good luck on finals btw! ^^
I don’t really have an “intended” voice for Selkie, mostly because my own inner-voice for her keeps changing. At the beginnings of the comic she spoke in my head much like you describe, a little raspy and husky. I suppose if I had to describe the inner voice she possesses when I read her, it would be a normal kid’s voice, maybe very slightly huskier than average. Not deep or raspy or anything noticeable, just with a very slight grit, but when she squeals or otherwise makes happy-noises the grit goes away.
You all wanna know something that occured to me? I think child actors can only legally work like six hours a day. If Selkie were a real-world production, Selkie herself would have to be CGI or played by an adult little person, because after all this make-up a real child actor wouldn’t have time for filming more than maybe one scene. Plus good luck getting an eight year old girl to sit still for six hours. XD
Dangit, a whole reply wasted because I can’t add at 2am… /sigh.
Ok…
I have notes somewhere about child actor hours. Directors and producers often work around this by scheduling things very carefully and having a child actor wear only the makeup they’ll need for the day’s shotlist. Assistant makeup artists are a big help; they cut down the time the kid needs to sit still by a lot.
As for hiring an actor versus cg: CG is very expensive–often prohibitivly so. And Selkie is a main character. Gollum in LOTR was a secondary character, and they had an actor for him, Andy Serkis, who worked with the other actors through the shoot. He also came in extra for the motion-capture, and the techs changed their Gollum-model to reflect Mr. Serkis’s bone structure and facial characteristics. I don’t think that would be possible for Selkie, since her structure isn’t quite as humanoid as Gollum’s (as I see it, anyway). I’d suggest hiring an actor and using CG effects sparingly.
…Third, I’m a radio/tv/film major, so I understand and empathize with the Finals Week Agony. Hope all your finals went well!
Upon reviewing the comic, it does kind of look like Selkie bit the shirt thief–who was Amanda–who then went through a very painful process to become… another selkie. O.o
That’s how I looked at it first, and had to re-adjust my understanding of the comic after reading the notes below. 😀
I’m glad you explained the make-up application. When I first saw it, I thought #5 was using a nail to mangled the eyes into the right shape, and #6 was chipping/ filing the teeth into points. I guess that would be a little too violent for this comic.
I used to be a big makup effects geek, but it’s been like a decade since I really followed that stuff. Back then though IIRC spirit gum was already obsolete outside of live theater. The movie & TV FX houses favored medical adhesives like Alcone, as they’re much less prone to coming unglued from heat or moisture.
I’d also expect selkie’s appliances to be made of silicone rather than latex. Latex still has it’s place in high volume appliance work, like Star Trek or Dr, Who, but for a show with only one heavy makeup character, who’s also the main character, silicone’s better looks and reusability would win out. Latex is also a sensitizer material, so not as good a choice for a child actor who’s going to be wearing it as often as would be needed for a role like this.
Actually, I’m not sure similarly long term contact lens wear would be something you could ethically (perhaps even legally) ask of a child actor either, for similar reasons. Not sure there’s a good solution for that. Replacing the just the eyes with CG would be far, far cheaper & simpler than full body replacement, but still very expensive, given the number of shots that’d be required each week.
The teeth would be single upper and lower denture-like appliances, not individual caps. Individual caps would increase man hours by at least an order of magnitude, both to create and to apply. Even when You’re just dealing with vampire canines, having them in a single piece that bridges across the back of the teeth or pallet is cheaper and faster, and the only downside is the actors have to practice speaking with them to avoid a lisp. With a child actor on a TV show they’d have to keep constantly remaking the dentures as her mouth grows, but the fact that they can just be clicked in or out in one second rather than adding another hour on both ends to the makeup process would still make that dirt cheap. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of individual caps being used for any situation where more than one tooth was being modified.
Oh, now I recognise the actress, we saw her without makeup in the April Fool’s episode.
Or was that a parallel world in which an amphibian actress gets brown eyepieces and pink face-paint?
Actually, that scene was shot in the underground kingdom of the worm people using some of the finest annelid actors and actresses of the industry. The make-up team really nailed their stuff that day!
It’s on my holiday list as we speak!
The whole thought of spray-on eye color sounded pretty cool, so I tried to check it out on google. Haven’t found anything for coloring the whites of your eyes yet, but I guess Switzerland has come out with spray-on color contacts (available in Switzerland and Japan at the moment.) Available in 4 colors.
http://www.refinery29.com/a-liquid-colored-contact-that-you-spray-into-your-eye
As far as I know I made up the idea. Although I am sure movie make-up crews have a trick or two. 😀