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[Andrea]

One of the costumes I'm currently working on involves what essentially is a full-body zentai suit with a hood and a hole cut out for the face. The suit is made of a fairly thin cotton/spandex knit, and I'm planning on tacking it down as flat as possible around the edges of my face with some spirit gum, then using makeup to color my face approximately the same color as the bodysuit, and blend the makeup into the edges of the bodysuit to make any difference less obvious.

However, I'm assuming there will still be a little "lip" where the fabric ends around my face. So I'm wondering how people generally do away with that and make a smooth transition from fabric over skin to bare skin? Left to my own devices, I suspect this is the excuse I needed to start experimenting with liquid latex, but I'm curious as to whether there are other or better methods.

[Ani_BEE]

It's hard because you really don't want to ruin the suit. Most people that do zentai suit usually stop at the neck line and blend it out with a tattoo/design or piece of jewelry.

What character are you trying to go for?

[Andrea]

Dryad from the Seiken Densetsu/Mana games.

http://mana.wikia.com/wiki/Dryad

Need to cover up my hair too for that one, and found it easiest to just build the ears into the hood, but still would prefer to have a face. I have an idea for what I'll do if I can't get a seamless transition, but I'm guessing someone here has a method.

[Evil Bishounen]

FUCK YEAH SEIKEN DENSETSU

Well, what I've seen people do for dramatic bodysuits is have a hood that goes over the head and under the wig/headpiece. In the front, the neck basically forms a high turtleneck that stops where the throat meets the head, because that region won't be seen in photos unless the photo is taken at an upward angle.

In this case, Dryad has BIG "hair" (or should I say, big leaves reminiscent of a tropical plant), so that works in your favor to hide the sides of your face. If the ears don't take very well to the hood, you could put them on a headband and put the leaf headpiece over it. There's so much volume to it that it'd be easy to use it to hide stuff like that.

Direct latex application may work if the edge of the neck is REALLY thin, otherwise you'll have an unsightly "dip" under it. But, maybe if you mold an appliance that has a bit more thickness and is smooth, you could hide it.

You didn't say if you were going for a specific version of Dryad, but in some of those, she has horizontal bark lines on her "skin". You could use that texture to your advantage to disguise a horizontal neck opening through airbrushing and makeup effects - make it look like it's part of the horizontal bark look.

[Andrea]

Originally Posted by Evil Bishounen

FUCK YEAH SEIKEN DENSETSU

Well, what I've seen people do for dramatic bodysuits is have a hood that goes over the head and under the wig/headpiece. In the front, the neck basically forms a high turtleneck that stops where the throat meets the head, because that region won't be seen in photos unless the photo is taken at an upward angle.

In this case, Dryad has BIG "hair" (or should I say, big leaves reminiscent of a tropical plant), so that works in your favor to hide the sides of your face. If the ears don't take very well to the hood, you could put them on a headband and put the leaf headpiece over it. There's so much volume to it that it'd be easy to use it to hide stuff like that.

Direct latex application may work if the edge of the neck is REALLY thin, otherwise you'll have an unsightly "dip" under it. But, maybe if you mold an appliance that has a bit more thickness and is smooth, you could hide it.

You didn't say if you were going for a specific version of Dryad, but in some of those, she has horizontal bark lines on her "skin". You could use that texture to your advantage to disguise a horizontal neck opening through airbrushing and makeup effects - make it look like it's part of the horizontal bark look.

Already planning on using the horizontal bark lines to camouflage the opening around parts of the face. It's just the vertical parts from chin to temple that I can't do that with.

The leaves, by the way, are attached to a wire-frame headgear assembly I made that goes under the hood, which has another opening at the top; once I have the headgear on and securely fastened, because it's heavy, I pull the hood up to cover the base wires, and palm fronds erupt from the top of my "trunk"! This costume has been a lot of work to engineer, but it's been really fun to make so far. All that's left is making a billion more palm leaves, and figuring out how exactly I want to do the makeup.

Yeah, I was thinking a few layers of liquid latex might be thick enough, one coat probably wouldn't do it. Molding something for those side areas may be a better idea, now that you mention it...

[Ani_BEE]

Actually the leaves should cover most of you edges as well and if you attach everything through the cowl as you described (including the ears) it should look rather flawless for transitioning.

[Andrea]

That's what I'm hoping. Just, Dryad was my online avatar all the way back in the mid-90s when I first got on the internet, I've always felt a special attachment to her, so I want this cosplay to be PERFECT. You know what I mean, right? But yeah, idea with the bodysuit and ears and whatnot was to have as few transition lines to deal with as possible, and make as many of them as I could horizontal so I could use the bark pattern to my advantage.

Hopefully you're right and what's left won't be too noticeable - I haven't tried tacking it down with the spirit gum yet, since I haven't gone out to do make-up/fabric matching. No sense in seeing how much of a lip there is after that until my skin and the fabric can be the same color anyway...

[Evil Bishounen]

If nothing else works out, you could tack down some large leaves in front to conveniently hide the edges of the hood (and any weird texture differences between face and fabric). Most versions of Dryad have "bangs" that frame her face, so it would look accurate.

[Andrea]

Yeah, I guess that's true... Hoping to have lots of froofy leaves going everywhere, but we'll see. Hoping I can go get the makeup to give it a shot tomorrow. Or possibly tonight. Yay 24 hour stores with a decent makeup section. (I'd post shots of what I'm talking about, but I sort of haven't taken any progress shots since I dyed the suit and started painting the bark texture on it. :P)

I had also thought if I just can't get it to work, intentionally color the edges of the fabric darker and have my skin be a shade or two lighter, so it looks like someone carved my face out of the tree trunk, under the bark. Already I'm not going to have huge cartoony anime eyes, so a little creative license is possible.

[Sweet Loretta]

I'm using a brand new product called Zombie Skin that we just got in stock. My friend Athena used it when she was on the TV show Face Off and has been using to to blend the seam edges of thongs/bikini bottoms on her body paint models. It works great too to build op fast layers and prosthetics. They are using it on the TV show The Walking Dead.

Zombie Skin is a latex product. It is like whipped butter and dries fast, in 4-5 min. It simply peels off. You can pigment the product and paint or airbrush over it easily.

[Andrea]

Holy crap - now that I've done a bunch of googling for more information, this does sound exactly like what I'm looking for. Thanks for the tip, and I may be making a purchase shortly. =) (And I love Face Off, when I can catch it - it's taught me such neat stuff...)

Question, though - what do you use to pigment it? Just regular pigment powders? Though I've got both acrylic paint and cream foundation now that matches the bodysuit pretty well, so covering it may be a better option... but just in case.

[Sweet Loretta]

We use face painting makeup to tint the zombie skin. We also do this with Wolfe FX Silicone. Just add in some creamy water activated makeup for coloring. I does cover over very well.

We used in two nights ago for a zombie event at our local Horror Film Society. We use several techniques on several people, covered it with Kryolan Supracolor, Wolfe face paints, even Loreal foundation, along to with varied blood products.

[Andrea]

As luck would have it, L'oreal foundation is actually the stuff I've got that's the same color as the bodysuit, so that's extremely good news. =) Thanks for the info!