Caput Madusae

CrystaCrysta ✭
in Makeup Effects
Hello everyone! 

I work at a medical school and I hire actors to come in and pretend to be sick/injured for our students to practice on. I've been using prosthetics and makeup for most things and it has worked pretty well so far (thank heavens for Stan Winston!). However, one of our upcoming cases is a bit more difficult and I'm not sure how to go about making this effect. It is called Caput Madusae and I'm not really sure how to make it look/feel like the veins are enlarged and swollen. In many instances, the patient also has a large "beer belly" due to an enlarged liver. Does anyone have any tips or ideas on how I can recreate this effect? 

Comments

  • Chris EllerbyChris Ellerby Admin
    One option would be to sculpt a belly with the enlarged veins, make a mold of the sculpture, and then cast the belly in any number of materials (latex, foam latex, silicone, etc) and back it with polyfoam.  You could then have it attach to your actor with some velcro straps to make application easy.

    Otherwise, you could make some enlarged vein prosthetics and apply those to the actor, or use a material like gelatin or 3rd-degree silicone to sculpt the enlarged veins directly onto the actor.

    /Chris




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