Alien Butterfly 1.0 – Full-Face Prosthetic & Creature Makeup by Anh Pham / PAFX Studio

Studio PAFX

Hey everyone at Stan Winston School!

I’m super excited to share my first entry for the 2026 Halloween Costume Contest: "Alien Butterfly 1.0"

This piece started from a late-night sketch where I wanted to merge the delicate, sweeping wing geometry of a butterfly with an eerie, eyeless extraterrestrial skull. Instead of traditional human eyes, the creature sees through a single glossy cyclopean "third eye" embedded in the center of the brow, while the cheek plates flare outward like striated butterfly wings covering the eye sockets, tapering down into exposed teeth and twin mandible horns at the chin.

1. From 2D Concept to Clay Sculpting:

Everything began with a white-on-black digital concept drawing to lock in the silhouette—specifically the sweeping cranial crest, the wing-shaped ocular plates, and the dual chin projections. Once the proportions felt right, I moved to the lifecast bust and sculpted the full-face appliance in brown oil-based clay, placing an acrylic sphere into the forehead to form the socket for the third eye and carving deep, organic striations and sensory pores across the wing plates.

2. Mold Prep & Pre-Painting:

After finalizing the textures, I laid the sculpt flat and built up a clean clay flashing wall around the perimeter to prepare it for molding. Once cast, I pre-painted the prosthetic on the lifecast bust using layered abyssal navy, cobalt blue, and frosty white highlights brushed along the high ridges to make the sculpted wing veins pop.

3. Final Application & Styling:

For the final transformation, I applied the prosthetic onto the model, blending the edges seamlessly into the skin and airbrushing bioluminescent violet, magenta, and cyan scale patterns across the temples, ears, neck, and hands. To complete the silhouette, I crafted spiky, black filament wing-ears and paired the makeup with a dark velvet cloak.

Thank you so much for looking, and happy Halloween from our studio to everyone in the SWSCA community!

Artisan: Anh Pham / PAFX Studio

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