How to Build Your Body!

Looking to build just the right body for a Halloween display? Well, you're in luck!
Let the students and staff at Levels show you...
HOW TO BUILD YOUR BODY!
(WARNING: Some images contain simulated gore -- but don't worry, it's all fake!)

We begin the process by casting realistic arms and legs from live volunteers.
L-R: Art coordinator Alyson Bradbury, Benny Katz, Jane Coons,
theatre coordinator Barry Weil, Lior Shahverdi. The bags are more than just
fashion statements -- plaster is messy.

First, you cut up plaster bandages and dip them in water,
then start applying them to the victim...er, volunteer.
IMPORTANT: Always coat your victim with petroleum jelly or you risk not
being able to remove the plaster. Luckily for Jane, we already knew this.

You have to apply the bandages quickly and smooth them
out before they start to dry.

Jane is starting to wonder if this was a good idea.

After the bandages dried, we removed them carefully from Jane (asking
your victim to wiggle fingers and flex muscles helps loosen the plaster)
resulting in the arm molds you see above. ALSO IMPORTANT:
throw any leftover liquid plaster in the garbage, NOT the sink -- it'll
clog your pipes. Luckily for the library's plumbing, we already knew this.

Barry and Nina Mor apply bandages to the feet of
alternate victim Bella Zeler, who is lucky she's not ticklish.

Once the molds have been made, it's time to cast
some limbs! Ben Slotnick and Lior mix the latex (liquid rubber)
we're going to use as "skin". It's non-toxic, but it does have a
really nasty smell (which explains the mask...though it's also kind of
a fashion statement).

Adding different colored dyes to the latex creates
an appropriate flesh tone. It's hard to judge, as the latex dries a bit
darker than it looks when it's liquid, but we wound up with a workable color.

Lior starts to paint latex into an arm mold. Painting is one of the
two techniques you can use to make a thin casting -- we chose
it for the arms because they were only going to be seen from
one side (we didn't need a bottom).

Ben coats the inside of the other arm mold with latex. Make sure
you don't use the good brushes for this -- it'll ruin them. 3-4 coats
works pretty well. You can strengthen the latex by sticking gauze pieces
in between some of the later coats.

Meanwhile, Barry uses one of the foot molds to demonstrate
the other thin-casting method, known as "slush casting" --
basically, you pour latex into the mold, slush it around so the
whole inside is coated with latex, and then pour out
the excess. When dry, repeat until you have 3-4 coats.
We did this for the feet as they had to be more dimensional.

We didn't want to deal with doing a torso mold, so we hot-glued together
pieces of upholstery foam in the shape of a somewhat out-of-shape torso,
glued fabric over it and then painted the whole thing with more latex.

We had a rubber replica of Barry's head left over from our production of
Jesus Christ Superstar (it was used as the head of John the Baptist),
so to save time, we glued and T-pinned it to the torso. Barry created the
head by plaster-casting his own face by himself, which he remembers
as a rather disturbing experience (note the facial expression).
The hair is a wig, and the eyes are from a craft store.

To finish the body, we glued the limbs to the torso (adding cotton dipped
in more latex to blend the seams), painted in details and made gruesome wounds
(in the show, we had an actor in "demon" makeup emerge from the hollow chest --
he hid under the table the body was lying on, which had a hole cut in it). To help
the arms and legs keep their shape, we took the original plaster molds we
had made, trimmed them and stuck them inside the latex limbs for support.

...and that's how you build a body!