MIDTERM - JEVIL

PLANNING

Jevil as he appears in the source material, Toby Fox's Deltarune.

Tumblr user Slimespectre's imagining of Jevil.

For this project, I decided to try doing a closet cosplay. It really just held the most interest for me, and I felt like I could find the most creative potential there. Jevil, a sinister secret boss from the video game Deltarune, was a challenging choice, but I was excited by the difficulty. He's a character I find really interesting, and even though I didn't have many of the materials needed (a ruff for my neck, a jester's hat, etc), I wanted to see what I could manage. I'm very proud of what ended up coming out.

My preliminary rendering of the makeup.

I took a picture of myself to start and then use photoshop to roughly color out what I wanted to do. From the beginning, I wanted to include his yellow teeth in the design, using yellow false nails. Since I don't have any dental wax, I very quickly decided that I'd need to make a false mouth with scar wax and attach the nails to my face with spirit gum. Also, Jevil's sclarea are black, while mine obviously aren't. I obviously wasn't going to buy sclarea contacts, and I was worried about how Photoshopping my eyes black would turn out, so I decided to instead paint my eyelids black and then close my eyes for pictures, thus creating a false eye. Jevil's ears are pointed, and I planned to make some ear tips and spirit gum them to my ears. Finally, Jevil's face in-game is very flat and doesn't include a nose. I didn't want to try and hide my nose completely, so I just rendered a simple highlight across my face to help flatten my nasal ridge a bit.

MATERIALS

Materials used - not including Ben Nye Spirit Gum, Ben Nye white creme makeup, and yellow false nails.

A closer look at some materials: Ben Nye's Creme Contour Wheel (Olive Light - Medium), specifically Cinnamon Creme Color and Black Creme Color, Ben Nye's Creme Vivid Violet, and Ben Nye's Creme Blue.

A closer look at some materials: Ben Nye's Neutral Set Colorless Powder, Ben Nye's Liquid Latex, Ben Nye's Nose and Scar Wax in Fair, and Elmer's All-Purpose White Gluestick.

I didn't purchase many new materials for this assignment - only the gluestick and the nails - because I felt it would go against the spirit of closet cosplay (aka, using whatever's in your closet). I foolishly threw them away, but to create the pointed ears, I ended up painting several layers of liquid latex onto mutli-media paper triangles, painting them with my base color, and then applying them to my ears with spirit gum.

Process

I forgot to take a progress picture, but this image of myself after most of the makeup is off gives a good idea of the layers.

To start, I glued up my eyebrows with the gluestick - Jevil doesn't have eyebrows. Then, I used an eyebrow pencil to draw the dimensions of Jevil's smile on my face, and then filled the shape in with black. After that, I covered my face, neck, and ears in the blue-purple base color (mix of white, blue, and purple) and applied shadows and highlights. The false eye effect and the clown makeup were both done with black creme makeup, same as the mouth. The trickiest part was the false mouth - I used spirit gum on the cuticles of the false nails, and then attached them to my lips and cheeks. Then, I rolled tubes of wax with the powder (otherwise, they stuck to my hands) and applied them to my face, securing with more spirit gum. I then used my spatula to smooth them out and create a more realistic shape. Afterwards, it was just a matter of painting everything the base color. Bits of paint rubbed off from my fingers to the teeth, so I covered that with brown creme paint to make the teeth look dirty.

Before

After

I'm really proud of how this turned out. My scar wax is definitely lumpy, but it's obvious what I was going for and it does read as a mouth. The color I created looks really accurate, and the ear tips look better than expected. I love how my highlights came out as well, and the teeth look super grody. Something I hadn't planned on was the teeth falling out on one side, but it actually looks better that way - they end around where my teeth would.

What I Learned

I learned a lot from this project - how to make cheap prosthetics, how to blend scar wax into skin, how to apply makeup to your ears (and then get it off), etc. I also made a lot of mistakes that helped me learn. Next time, I'm going to let my eyebrows dry before applying foundation, and I'll wash my hands before applying false teeth. I think, in general, I'll press the teeth into the scar wax and apply it that way instead of applying them individually. Overall, I really enjoyed this project, and I'm excited to do more character creation and get even better at this!