On Site:
On the top right you can click the “ORDER A MASK” Button. On mobile you’ll find it by tapping the menu icon in the same place and it’ll be at the bottom.

This will take you through the process of choosing a base form and will give you a look at some of the paintjobs I’ve done for each mask in the past.

When you’re ready, you can fill out the form and select which mask you’re looking to purchase. Let me know what kind of paint treatment you’re looking for, as well as send through some images that have inspired you (including pictures of my masks that you like the look of, if you want).
This will help me get a better idea of what you want.

On Stream:
If I’m currently live and you’re in my chat. Whether you’re wanting a mask that I’m showing off that doesn’t have a home yet, or you want me to make your mask next. Just ask me!

It’s faster to do it live and we can have a quick chat and do payment there.

Unfortunately not.
I’m in the business of making original art and I’m not looking to become a resin casting factory.
I did enough of that in film to last me a life time.

• Sculpture - 3 to 12 months.
  Mask making as a streamer makes this a long process. It’s not every week that I find a day to work on the sculpture and when I do it’s a day full of casual chats and many lovely distractions. It is primarily a form of content, and I like to take my time. Most days are spent painting masks for my community.

• Mould making - 1 week.
  Now this actually takes me a long longer in between everything else that I’m doing. But I’ve done it all in one stretch of back-to-back days once before (Torment). And this is about how long it took me.

• Straps / Leatherworking - 2 days.
  This is a hard one as I never just make one pair of straps at a time. I’m usually making sets of 5-10 at a time. Between dying, oiling, sealing there is a lot of downtime waiting for things to set, soak, and dry. This can take a couple of days.

• Casting / Painting / Finishing - 10-25 hours.
  This is the process that most people are referring to when they are asking how long they take to make, and it’s perhaps the toughest to quantify.
  This is roughly how long it takes me to fulfil an order, but this is often extended with the cure times for clear coats and the revisits that I do to make each piece perfect. Every paintjob has it’s challenges, but some take significantly longer than others (You can add straps this this equation as well).

It all started when I was a lost artist in my early 20s.

I was stuck in a dead-end job that was making me miserable. When one day, during a lunch break, I came across an advertisement for a one-year course in production design and sculpting.

I had never tried sculpture before. Unless you count unrecognisable Play-Doh shapes that would inevitably end up in my mouth as a child (which I do, of course). But something in me said:
“Y’know what? I think I could do this.”

Unlike other artistic opportunities (especially when it comes to education). It seemed that there really could be a job at the end of this. With New Zealand having such a thriving film industry. It was a no-brainer.

The big assignment for the year was to create a full-size, over-the-head latex mask. We were given a couple of months to complete it. And guess what? My ADHD ass spent eight months on it and almost failed the entire course. I redesigned him twice. And spent half the time yapping to my teacher and classmates.

I might have spent more time walking around the room joking around and helping others with their sculptures than I did working on my own. Sculpting had clicked for me in a way nothing else really had before.

I got along with the people around me. And I had no idea at the time that connecting with people through art was maybe the single most important skill I was developing during my time there.

But I got there. I finished my first mask! One that would be given the name “Jeff”, but we’ll get to that.

After I graduated, I ended up working in film on various projects.
In 2017, after wrapping on AvED s3, I started my very first livestream on Twitch, playing video games under the name “GrumblyNZ”. Content creation and entertaining were also passions of mine, and it seemed like a good way to spend my time in-between film jobs. I fell in love with it.

Even then, I had that first mask with me, sitting in the background of my stream. A mascot of sorts.
Which, looking back now, feels very fitting.

“Who’s that?” someone in my chat asked. “Uhhh… Jeff?” I replied, without giving it much thought.
Needless to say, it stuck.

It wasn’t until I wrapped up work on the Mulan remake in 2018 that I got back into streaming again. This time, giving sculpting on stream a try. With two shitty webcams and a dream, I gave it a go.
“Gerald” is the name of the mask I made through those streams. I moulded him, but still to this day, I haven’t cast him.

I was doing everything I could to make streaming work. But my struggle came from a combination of things:
Art streams on Twitch hadn’t really taken off yet the way it did during the pandemic, and most of the platform’s audience were still gamers, looking for gaming content.

And I was still green. both as an entertainer and in what one might call “vibe curation”.

I still remember the day I got the call to work on the new Lord of the Rings series.

I was excited.
I was heartbroken. And I was at a crossroads. Do I decline the job and try to make streaming work?
Or continue in film and leave my community behind once again?

These jobs demand 50 to 70 hours a week. I couldn’t stream and work at the same time, and my community knew that.

That night, I went live to tell them the news.
“What do I do?”

“We’ll be here when you get back.”
They wouldn’t let me turn it down.

I still see people from those early streams pop into chat now and again. I hope they know how much that meant to me.

During my time on Rings, I learnt a lot. This isn’t a story of my film journey as much as it is about mask making and streaming. But this was a big time for me. This was the first time that I was working on a film project as a full-time sculptor. Not an assistant. Not a fabricator or a prop maker. The badge said 'Sculptor'; this was everything I had been working toward. Everything I had wanted.

Except for the freedom…

In 2020 the virus arrived, and we were all sent home. I said to myself, “It’s now or never” and went all in on creating art content on Twitch. Not masks yet, digital paintings. Monster portraits. It was quick, it was fun, and with the whole world stuck at home in front of their computers with nothing else to do. I built an audience QUICK. I was partnered with Twitch within a few months, and I was slowly building the community and job of my dreams.

Until I came to a familiar crossroad.

“The government said we can start working again.” My boss said on the phone. “It’s time to come back to set.”

“I quit.”

The way I was feeling… It was like that scene at the end of Good Will Hunting.
“I gotta’ see about a girl.”

I needed to see if I could make this work.

I’d been streaming these digital paintings for some time. All the while, Twitch chat was hearing stories of my time working in the film industry, of the things I used to sculpt. And eventually, I felt like it was time to switch it up. To show them.
It was time to go back to making masks.

I didn’t take it too seriously at first.
I worked the same way I did with my first two mask sculptures, Jeff and Gerald. I went big. I created a giant, toothy monstrosity that Chat lovingly dubbed “Egg”.

The project was too large. It was ugly. It just wasn’t what I wanted it to be.

I have no idea what it was that switched inside me while I was working on that sculpture, but I realised something.
I needed to go smaller. Scale it down. Focus on what really matters to me. The detail. The emotion…

I created Mr Smooth.

1. I sculpt the base design in monster clay. An oil/wax based medium that never dries or hardens.

2. I make a quick silicone mould of the sculpture's face. This is backed with a plaster shell, which is needed to keep the mould's shape after de-moulding.

3. I slush cast a master copy of the mask by rotating small batches of resin in the mould until the layers are thick enough that the casting will keep its shape once it is removed (this is the only time I slush cast).

4. I clean up the casting, removing flashing from the edges and around the eyes. If it’s a smooth design (like Torment’s horns or Lady Fragile, for example), it’s at this stage that I sand and polish the casting.

5. Once happy with the face of the cast, I typically destroy the original sculpture, as it’s no longer needed, and I will need to reuse the headform to make new sculptures. I will also throw out the original silicone & plaster mould.

6. Now this is where it gets tricky.
   I create a 2-part matrix mould around the cast. A process which involves building up clay around the piece and walling off the edges (I use WED clay, which is water based and quick to work with). Creating a fibreglass jacket over the clay. Removing the clay. And filling the void left by the removed clay
   with silicone.
   There’s a fantastic video by Burgerstrings that covers a version of this process that you can watch here –My moulds differ in that the pour spout is on the bottom. I cast my masks upside down, vertically. This, along with the way that I cut and design my moulds, means that I don’t need to injection cast.
   Gravity takes care of filling all of the voids for me.

7. This next step technically takes place in the middle of step 6. But Christ, would you look at the size of that thing? I’m not putting anything else in there.
   Once I have the 2 fibreglass halves and I’ve filled the first side with silicone to mould the face side of the mask cast. I remove the slush-cast resin cast of my sculpture along with the remaining WED clay. Still with me?

8. Now this is a very important step and something that separates my work from a lot of mask makers out there.
   I sculpt in the back of the mask before I finish off the back half of the mould. This allows me to carefully manage the thickness (thinner on the nose to allow for more room, thicker on the brow and around the mouth to have the mask sit off the face a touch). I then texture the inside with a soft cast iron texture. And starting with Lord Mourning, this is where I added my signature “G” on the inside.
   I’ll take a moment here to say that doing all of this is part of what makes these true pieces of collectable art and sets them apart from cheaper alternatives. Trust me when I say that you can feel the difference.

9. I then bolt the mould shut and pour the second batch of silicone, taking an impression of the back and finishing the mould.

10. Once everything is cured. I open the mould. Remove the clay back sculpt and clean the mould. It’s now time to bolt it back together and finally cast a mask!
    
    — Everything before this point is done months or years in advance. The following steps document the repeatable process I’m being paid to start when an order comes through. —

11. For resin I like to use Smooth-On’s Smooth-Cast 320 series. It being off-white helps with cleaning up the cast (I find it hard to see what you’re doing when it’s bright white).
    This is weighed out, mixed, degassed and poured into the mould. I have a pressure chamber big enough to cast in, but I’ll need to redo the silicone in my moulds before that happens. The general rule is: degas your silicone. Cast under pressure.
    Good thing I’m always under pressure. -__-

12. Open the mould and check the cast for any bubbles or imperfections. Clean / fill / trim / sand. It’s all very quick, as the moulds are so CRISP there’s minimal cleanup. Casting takes about 5 minutes (excluding cure time), and cleanup takes about the same. I had slush-cast about 8 or 9 masks in the very beginning of my mask-making journey, and that was enough for a lifetime.
    Now instead of spending that extra hour on casting and clean up per mask. I spend weeks trying to convince my ADHD ass that getting around to making that monstrosity of a mould will bring me dopamine when it’s finished and I can finally start painting my new sculpture.

13. Wash the cast under soapy water to get rid of any dust or resin residue. Once dry, I prime the mask with an etch primer on both sides. Then a regular prime, front and back again.

14. I work my painting magic. This typically takes between 8 and 20 hours depending on the design and complexity.

15. I can make another write-up about the leatherworking step for the straps some time. But for now, just check out this reel I made a while ago; it shows a lot of the process.

16. Masks are then clear coated for protection. once with an ultra-durable gloss coat and again with a satin coat (this gives a finish that is closer to skin). I then pick out the glossy bits with a brush-on gloss varnish. Eyes, lips, wounds, and tears all get this treatment.

17. I drill holes in the temples of the mask and cut down a pair of Chicago screws to fit the mask I’m finishing up. These are what I use to attach the straps to the mask.

18. All that’s left is to take some pictures. Including the most important one. Each mask comes with their own personal certificate of authenticity in the form of a signed Polaroid of me wearing your mask! A snapshot in time before I say goodbye to this art piece that I’ve poured so much of myself into.

    Let this be a reminder to never gatekeep the process.
    You will find success as an artist not because others can’t do what you do.But because no one else can do it quite like you.
    
    There are a million different ways to do this, and this is mine. <3

• I sculpt the masks in monster clay

• I make a 2-part silicone and fibreglass mould of the mask.

  — The 2 steps before this point are done months or years in advance. The following steps document the repeatable process I’m being paid to start when an order comes through —

• Pour polyurethane resin into the mould.

• Open the mould, remove the newly formed mask and clean it up.

• Prime it, Paint it. Clearcoat it.

• Attach handmade leather straps to the mask.

• Ship it.

I sure can!
Though something to keep in mind is that due to the considerable amount of time and resources required for this process, these custom pieces are generally aimed at businesses and serious collectors and are priced accordingly. If you’re interested you can find more information here

If you’re wanting a custom paint-job on one of my pre-sculpted designs, you can view the catalogue here

Masks - Smooth-Cast 320 Series Polyurethane Resin Plastic.
Straps - 100% Vegetable Tanned Full Grain Leather

Monster Clay - Medium
This is an oil / wax based clay that never hardens or dries (Unless you give it a few years). This allows me to sculpt for months without needing to rehydrate my sculpting medium.

Because there is no way to cure this clay (heat will melt it). I make moulds of my sculptures so that I can reproduce them in plastic.

Just over 3 years. Though I technically made my first one in 2016 when I was studying to enter the film industry!

If you’d like to read the long-complicated history of my mask journey, it’s under “How did you get in to mask making and streaming?”

I’d love to say my inspiration comes from something poetic.
Like some book, or iconic horror film.

But honestly? It’s mostly video games.

The beautiful and sometimes dark worlds of games like Morrowind and Fable pulled me toward fantasy early on. While the horror and unsettling aesthetics in games like Nightmare Creatures and Bloodborne helped define the mood and tone I gravitate toward in my work today.