The Mask of Aku Aku

It's The Physio's birthday. It's a big birthday so The Artivist wanted to get her lots of nostalgia. He's made her a mixed tape (on a memory stick) and compiled lots of photos of them together as children. 

And he wanted to make this:

For those of you who don't know, this is the mask of Aku Aku, which is featured in 90's PS1 game, Crash Bandocoot.

I have a handheld mini grinder what that my parents bought me for Christmas, so I was really excited to find a project that'd let me try it out. 

We found a log to cut up for our mask base, and some other pieces of wood for the facial features, and we dried out all of our wood by leaving it on a rack above an electric heater for a day or two. 

I trimmed two discs off the end of this stick for the eyes and The Artivist painted them with this yellow-orange gradient effect. 

We trimmed another disc and stripped the bark off it, which we cut into two pieces and painted green for the green bags under Aku Aku's eyes. I don't seem to have a picture of them, but you'll see them on the end product. 

We cut two pieces for the eyebrows and painted them red. 

For the mouth, I trimmed a piece of wood to size and cut a hole in the middle. I used a little sander attachment to tidy up the shape in the middle of the top lip. The Artivist mixed a brownish shade of red for lips and painted them. Once the red was dry, I drew shine cracks on the lips with black paint and a skewer. 

I'm not really sure how I made the nose. I started cutting a triangular prism, then I cut the base to a more triangular shape. And I basically hacked away at it until it looked vaguely noise shaped, then I used the little sanding cylinder to tidy it up. I dug a couple of holes for nostrils and painted it the same colour as the eyebrows. 

We wanted the base of the mask to be a piece of bark, so we took this log and hacked a piece off with a saw. It was not an easy job. The Artivist did it. We also cut the bottom two corners of the bark off because the mask doesn't look square in the games. 

At the top, I sanded down the wood that had no bark over it, so the bark itself is more defined as the actual mask. Had I had more time I'd have liked to have removed the under wood from the top altogether, but I think it looks good like this. 

We did cut away the under wood where we trimmed the bottom corners, but don't seem to have any photos of that step. 

We used the little sanding cylinder attachment on my mini grinder to flatten the mask face in the spots where the facial features sit, to make it easier to glue them down.

I used this tool to mark the teeth onto the space that will show between the lips. We painted the teeth white and used a light yellow to define the grooves between teeth.

The Artivist selected which feathers he wanted for Aku Aku's head, then I drilled holes into the top of the wood for the feathers to fit in, with glue to encourage them to stay put. Then we used a generous amount of PVA glue to fix the facial features in place. 

 

We let the mask dry overnight, then sprayed it with clear lacquer to preserve it. 

We're really pleased with the end

 result and, judging from the photo she sent us, so is The Physio. 

Baby proofing

The Youngling keeps getting bigger and more curious. He's always trying to get at things he can't quite reach. Lately he's been trying to pull down these books, and succeeding in a rather uncontrolled manner that leaves him at risk of big heavy objects landing on his feet, possibly hitting his head on the way down. So I need to stop him getting at it.

I've got this bit of card that's big enough to cover the space on two shelves. I paper mache it with one layer of kitchen towel, then squirt some poster paints on it. I want to make a green / blue spray from a white centre. 

I spread the coloured paints towards the edge, then towards the white centre.

I didn't really have enough blue poster paint, but luckily I still have a few blue and green shades left over from the paint by numbers that The Artivist bought me for our anniversary.

I paint lines spreading outwards using all the blues and greens I have left, trying to keep the darker shades nearer to the perimeter and the lighter shades nearer to the middle.

I want more white in the middle but there's a lot of paint on the card now. It needs time to dry before I do anything else to it. I leave it overnight then paint a new white centre. 

Next I look online for silhouettes of faeries. I save a few pictures that I like, then use photoshop to copy elements of each. I like the wings of one, the skirt from another. I take the parts that I like and stick them together to make my own design. 

Once I've created a silhouette I'm happy with I print it and cut it out. I put the template on my painted card (which is dry by now) and draw around it with a pencil. The wings and hair are a bit fiddly to cut out so I'll paint those free hand.  

Then I paint over my pencil lines and fill in the silhouette. Finally, I copy the wing detail and the female's hair by eye.

Last thing to do is fix the picture to the front of the bookcase. The bottom shelf is for The Youngling's books and toys. I fix two angle brackets to the bottom of the next shelf up, pointing upwards, and two onto the top of the middle shelf, pointing down. I leave enough space for the cardboard to fit between the bracket and the shelf. Then I slide my picture in sideways.

I'm sure if The Youngling wanted to get at the items behind the picture he'd be able to destroy it in 30 seconds flat, but he's so far made no attempt to do so, or even appeared curious about it. So I feel my mission is accomplished.