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Zombie head casting was everything we could wish for – long, messy, productive, and fun!
2015 March 29 - Zombie plaster cast party8
Our SFX masters Sean George and Eden Kontrimas accompanied four of our “horde” zombies with Blair and Samantha for a day of mold making and casting. At the Toronto School for Professional Make-up where Sean is a teacher by day, we had the luxury of the entire FX department for the whole 7 hours it took to create these beauties.
Volunteering their faces to the zombie cause were Mandi Sunshine, Richard Chuang, Lex Darian and Justine Cargo.  And Blair couldn’t let the day go by without getting a cast of himself done – for future posterity.

These casts are destined for the highest tier of ZomBFX full face prosthetics for our Ripe ‘n Rotten zombies.  We’re even considering selling them online if we can swing that. Everyone wants to look as good as these guys after Sean gets done with their zombie FX, so why not share the love?
In the course of mixing and pouring and generally making a mess, someone thought to read the instructions on the Alja-Safe (alginate or Alginic acid used to make temporary molds needed on body parts when making life casts).  The instructions say “must wear gloves”. And we were smearing this all over everyone’s faces.  Concerning?  Well, it’s called “Alja-Safe” not “Alja-Cancer“, after all, so pretty sure no one will suffer any adverse effects.

Blair and his idol Freddy at zombie head casting day

Blair and Freddy – a dream come true!


When any part of the Bony Fiddle crew get together, it never fails that some hilarity will ensue.  At one point, when Samantha was working to film a little blurb with Mandi, she was “attacked” by Freddy Krueger and couldn’t get loose.
Not to worry, she’s safe and her sweater just got caught on one of the claws of a life size (and very realistic) statue of Freddy.  Blair’s Freddy obsession was in overdrive as you can imagine.
Near-done zombie cast heads

Almost done – waiting on finishing touches


Each mold made separately, Sean and Eden went through a cycle of hair covering, applying Vaseline, smearing Alja-Safe all over each victim, er, volunteer’s heads and wrapping with plaster bandages. Once set and removed, they moved on to the second step of the life casts which involved coating the insides of each temporary cast with cement and burlap for strength. A short time later, the temporary molds were torn off, leaving the finished zombie head casts.
7 hours and lots of clean-up later, we had 5 perfect head casts.  They’ve now joined the ranks of recently created Bony Fiddle skulls in Blair’s workshop.  Destined for zombie fame, we plan to get lots of use out of them and you’ll see them in action the next time you order some Ripe ‘n Rotten zombies for your event or shoot.