Lifecasting

What is LifeCasting?

LifeCasting is the art of making molds directly from the human body in order to produce life-sized sculptures. A casting material is then poured into the mold. When the casting material cures the mold is removed revealing the sculpture.

Hand casting, face casting, torso casting and casting both the hands and feet of babies are the most popular types of projects. The materials are inexpensive, the process is fun, and the resulting castings can last for generations.

A variety of molding materials can be used. Alginate, plaster bandages and silicone are the most common.

Alginate: Before use, alginate is a powder. When water is added, it forms a thick liquid. This liquid is applied to the model. In a fairly short period of time, this liquid solidifies into a rubbery solid. When removed from the model, the inside surface of the alginate is an exact negative duplicate of the body part. A casting medium is poured into this mold and when the casting medium has cured the alginate is removed to reveal the lifecast. Details down to the fingerprint level can be obtained with this technique.

Plaster Bandages: These are not only used to make an impression directly from the body, but are also used to create a mother mold to support an alginate or silicone mold.

Petroleum jelly can be aplied to the model's skin, then plaster bandages are applied to form a hard shell. If these bandages are applied very carefully, a reasonable facimile of the model's body can be produced. It will have much less detail than either the alginate or silicone molds, but it is also faster and less expensive than either of the other two.

Silicone: Silicone would appear to be the ideal molding medium. Easy to mix, easy to apply, it sticks to itself so the mold can be made in multiple steps, it never shrinks, its very strong and it gets great detail. Its also about 10 times as expensive as alginate. A lot of lifecasters do their initial mold with alginate, pour their casting, repair any imperfections in their casting, then make a silicone mold from that for producing the final pieces.