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Good morning class and welcome to part II of our Indiana Jones special. This week I will be dressed as Professor Indie and showing you how to make a crystal skull.

Backyard FX and the Budget Crystal Skull

Erick Beck is a trained professional who knows the tools he's using. You could easily explode, dismember. Or KILL yourself while attempting to recreate these projects. IF YOU MISUNDERSTOOD AND OR DO NOT FOLLOW OUR INSTRUCTIONS EXACTLY.

If you do not know what you are doing find someone that does to help you out, and if you are under 18 get the supervision of an adult.

Be as safe as you are creative, and enjoy the show!


Last week we showed you how to make a face melt effect for less than $35 and this week I am going to show you how to make a prop crystal skull like from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, it is in the title. Yes—

Female1: Can we spin the wheel to determine this week's budget?

Erick: Yes, excellent question, T. A. Gary—Okay, now that we got our budget, we will need the following items for this build.

Shopping list: 10 pounds of paraffin wax, 2 pounds of cheap alginate, 2 rolls of plaster bandages, 2 pound of clay, and the left over Styrofoam head.

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Okay, before we get to start in this build, I have a little confession; this is actually our second attempt and the first one was a huge disaster. So our first attempt failed. Here is the first crystal skull. The problem is, the resin did not cure the way we thought. IOt cured in like a big lump as oppose to like coating the inside of the mold. It just got a big stinky sort of clear brain thing.

This is a sort of a better idea of what it would look like, same material just left in the front of the mold. So that is pretty cool if we would have had a ton of resin which probably would cost us $60, we could have filled the whole thing but it would have been stinky. It would have still not been super clear.

So to make the long story short, clear resin does not play nice with big tweedy molds or alginate or maybe me. I do not know, but let us show you how to do it the right way.

I wanted to start out with something that was already the basic shape of the skull. So I cut up an old Styrofoam head. Using clay in the photos I have found in the internet, I did my best to sculpt the crystal skull out of clay on top of the foam. Take your time and refer to as many photos as possible. When you are happy with the clay positive, let it dry a bit then cover with the thin layer of Vaseline. Next, make up some slow set alginate. We covered up the skull in two halves using the same technique as in the second fake hand episode which is basically alginate and then plaster bandages. The big question now is whether or not the clay skull would come out of the mold. Hurray! It did and it did even get ruined in the process. Now we have an alginate negative. After trying to fill it with clear resin and totally failing we switch the paraffin wax. We filled up the negative again, let it cool down and then remove it from the mold. The cool thing about the wax version is you can carve out any imperfections after it comes out of the mold. So just pull the wax, the second crystal skull out of the mold and it is okay, it was not quite as clear ahe I was hoping and so it little like to formed because this was the second time we use the alginate mold the day after it was made. So it sorts of shrink or kind of to form just something alginate does. So I could jump out of plane to California and Jared is going to finish up the skull and kind of carved out the wax and fix that deformation. You guys should try it yourself and see this video.

Test film:
Chris Ford: I like where you are going with this one but I think the editing rhythm could be more urban. Oh, hey, Chris Ford here. Graduation time is upon us and it is time to get a job. Have you considered the career in music video and commercial drafting? There might be more to it than you ever imagined. Let us take a look.

Number one, beautiful views and a clean hygienic working environment.

Male: I want to work in this industry.

Chris: But mainly it is all about snacks and video games too. There is treasure in every jar.

What is this, human hands do not make this.

Male: And remember to enter the world of advertising if you can or if you can not, then do not.


Alright everybody that wraps up our two-part Indiana Jones special. I had so much fun this last two weeks making these effects because Indiana Jones is one of my favorite all time series. I mean they do not even pay us for this. So why don't you let us know what you thought of the new movie and leave me a comment down below and please subscribe because they did not pay us.

Viewer Quick Tip:
Warren: When shooting digitally step back from the camera for a minute, take a look at your dailies and make sure you really got what you want, otherwise you are going to let your actors go and you are going to loose the shot.

Good morning class and welcome to part II of our Indiana Jones special. This week I will be dressed as Professor Indie and showing you how to make a crystal skull. Backyard FX and the Budget Crystal Skull Erick Beck is a trained professional who knows the tools he's using. You could... click to read more