Just for the hell of it, I've decided to document my attempt here at making a crew cut wig for my Alexander (Iplehouse EID Arvid).
By all means, if anyone has an electrostatic flocker or the money to buy one, feel free to try it yourself! I'm just doing this because I can't' find what I'm looking for to buy
The idea is to hopefully make wigs that look something like these:
I got the idea to try electrostatic flocking when I remembered seeing a making-of documentary from 101 Dalmations live action movie where they created very life-like newborn puppies by using an electrostatic flocker on the silicone puppy puppets.
Unfortunately the only thing I could find out was that Esteban Mendoza was the Flocking Supervisor and all I could find on him besides his movie credits was this workshop he's running in Germany. At least there are some pictures on the page that gave me hope that what I want to do is possible though:
http://www.theaterakademie.de/de/studiu ... ndoza.html
I bought a cheap home unit for $110 called Scooter's Static Stick. I'm not sure if it's too weak for what I want it to do or not. There are so many factors... like the thickness of the silicone, the grounding material and connection, the working time of the fibers before they reverse charge... etc. It's all been a lot more scientifically complicated than I realized it would be.
For my trials I've been using clippings from wigs that I cut before since flocking fibers that are long enough are actually pretty expensive. Commercial fibers are chemically treated for optimal usage, but for my experiments I've found that spraying my clippings with Static Guard has been enough to neutralize the natural static charge that the fibers have enough to play with them. Now that I've experimented some though and have had a certain amount of success, I've decided to go ahead and buy some real flocking fibers when I get my next paycheck. See if they work better. Plus they will all be one length so I won't have to trim the entire thing afterwards. Also asked if it was possible to rent one of the expensive units. I can't afford to spend $1,300something to experiment on a few wigs, no matter how badly I want the look.
So started by putting my guy's head on a makeshift stand and shrinkwrapping it. the shrinkwrap I got was stiffer than I had hoped though. I handled a softer shrinkwrap before which probably would have conformed more smoothly, but I decided to work with what I got.
I casted that in silicone and then used poured some casting plastic inside and rolled it around till it thickened enough all around. Then I stopped up the neck hole and poured plastic at the bottom for the stand. Once the plastic was all cured I used my dremel tool to smooth out the scalp and hollow out the face area so I could line the scalp for grounding. I drilled a bunch of holes in it because I initially thought I'd be flocking in sections, but it turns out that for a long list of reasons that I don't want to get into, it's better to just do it all in one go instead of sections, so Im' going to make another cast that only has one hole. Even when I trim the little spikes off the inside of the silicone they still make the wig stick up too much around the edges.
here's what the stand looks like:
I lined inside with copper foil as a conductive grounding material for the pin from the flocking device to connect to. That's what all the holes are for. The foil is rather stiff though so I need to find a better way to get it to line the inside. Plus when I make the new head stand, it will only have that one hole, so I will be able to drill a hole in the copper too and that will ensure that the grounding pin sticks through the copper and has a good connection to it.
I'm using Smooth-on's sorta-clear silicone for this project. It's pretty thick, but I also bought thinning and thickening agents when I bought the silicone since I didn't know if I might need one or the other.
Here's the results of my first experiment. Brace yourself... it's horrible!
With this trial too many of the hairs did not connect vertically and did not embed far enough, so when the silicone was done curing only about half of the fibers had adhered. The rest brushed out as I rubbed my fingers around the wig. The fact that the clippings are different lengths doesn't help the look either o_O
I should have taken a picture of both sides... this side in the pic is the thinnest spot because that was the last section I flocked.
Think the next experiment I'm going to thin the silicone for one to see if that helps.
Plus before I did this experiment I didn't realize that fibers became less viable as you worked with them, so I had already been playing with them before I tried them on silicone which probably weakened their potential before hand.
Hopefully further experiments will yield much better results without me having to spend a fortune!
If anyone has a good working knowledge of electrostatic flocking or static electricity, please let me know if you have some tips!
