DIY “They Live” Alien Masks: Retro Sci-Fi Brilliance

They Live is one of my favorite sci-fi movies from the ’80s. It’s definitely in my top 5. Not only am I a huge John Carpenter fan, it features wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper. It just doesn’t get any better than a story about aliens trying to take over the Earth, and human beings can’t see them unless they are wearing special sunglasses. One of the classic lines from that movie is “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubblegum.” I read a few months ago that there is going to be a They Live remake, but who knows if it’s actually true.

Artist Kiersten Essenpreis and her friend figured out a way to make some super cool They Live alien masks, and of course, I had to share them with you. The first picture below shows the finished masks, and as you can see, they are fabulous. The second picture shows a pictorial step-by-step for how they made them. There is also a video below showing a 30 second time-lapse of how they put it all together.

They used paper mâché for the first layer to create the muscle texture on the masks. After that dried, they used paper clay to actually sculpt the bone structure. They got the masks to look extra long by hot gluing two cheap masks together (to get that elongated jaw line). They finished it off with a coat of paint and gloss. They were able to create each mask for under $15. Forget keeping this in a box until the next cosplay event, I want one to display in my bedroom all year long. Having a They Live mask is like staking claim to a little piece of sci-fi history! Awesome work!

Click For Enlarged Image

Via: [Fashionably Geek]