Majora's Mask Paper Mache Project

Legend of Zelda has been a source of inspiration for me ever since I first played Twilight Princess, so with the re-launch of Majora's Mask for the Nintendo 3DS I thought what better way to celebrate than with creating the famous mask itself!
And why try to make something that I wouldn't enjoy making?

If you're completely at a loss as to what the Legend of Zelda is, I suggest you google it. But this is the mask I attempted to bring to life

There were plenty of videos and images of masks other people had created so I used those to help guide me along, especially since this was my first time trying out paper mache. 

The first thing I did was draft out the shapes I wanted. Did some math. 

I even used a 3D render I found on google images. It was incredibly helpful when I was figureing out what I wanted to make pop out and such. 

So the next step was to make my paper mache mix. I didn't use measurements, just eyeballed it according to how thick or thin I wanted the mixture to be. Water, glue, flour.  Then I took a balloon filled with air and started to layer on the newsprint strips I had cut. I think I had about 15 or 16 layers over the course of two days. To help speed up the drying process I used a hairdryer. The mask mold you see there covered in gesso I thought I was going to use but in the end I never used it, so don't worry about that.

Next, after the paper mache was completely dry and felt like plaster, I popped the balloon from the bottom and cut out the general heart shape I had drawn out in the beginning.

Majora's mask has spikes all around it so I took rolls of news paper and rolled them like party hats, stuffed them with more newspaper, and then covered them in masking tape. There are ten in total on the mask.

The mask looked like this after I taped on the spikes and added more paper mache all over the mask. I did this to help the spikes adhere and stay put.

Once the mask was dry yet again, I took some apoxie sculpt and outlined the eyes and parts of the mask's designs that I wanted to protrude from the base.

The apoxie needed 24 hours to harden so I went to bed and came back the next morning. I took my gesso out again and slathered it all over the mask to give my acrylic paints something to really stick to.

I painted the inside of the mask black so it wouldn't be so distracting from behind.

Mixed some red and brown together to get a deep red color.

For the eyes I mixed a golden/lemon yellow and then sponged on a light orange. The pupils are a lime green. On the bottom part of the mask I mixed a little black with a forest green and the top is a navy blue mixed with a dark grey. Some people use purple but I wanted to give the mask a darker color tone. And the spikes are yellow for the base coat.  

Painted the outlines I had made out of apoxie black.

Did some more sponging on the spikes and added the smaller details by hand. Unfortunately I didn't make the mask big enough for the small triangle designs above the eyes. The next time I decide to make the mask I'll definitely have to make the heart shape bigger. 

And there you go, Majora's Mask! In total this took 4 days to make. The first 3 days I spent about 6 hours to paper mache and the 4th day took around 3 hours to paint and seal.

I used matte mode-podge on everything but the eyes and spikes. For the spikes and eyes I used glossy modge-podge. 

It's life sized.

Cost wise I spent around $70, which isn't too bad. There's plenty leftover for more masks. This was an awesome experience, I loved making this mask and I'd do it again. 

• Who are you: name, major? Alisanna House, Fine Arts major.
• Why did you choose this project? I've never done paper mache and I wanted to try it out.
• How much time did it take? Over the course of 4 days, around 20 hours. 
• How much did it cost? I spent a little over $70.
• What was the biggest challenge? Waiting for the layers to dry completely was a big challenge as well as painting the raised parts of apoxie sculpt. It was hard to make it look neat.
• If you had it to do over, what would you do differently? Next time I'd make the heart shape bigger, figure out a way how to make the spikes pointier, and sand down some of the bumpy texture the paper mache makes.