When I made my Tiki god Minimate Akua Kepeli, I made extras of his mask so I'd have enough to work with. Some masks didn't turn out as well, ending up as deformed half-masks. I couldn't use them on the Tiki god, but they looked cool, so I hung on to them. And then one day walking through the craft store I found some glow-in-the-dark paint, and suddenly the idea of Tiki Ghosts popped into my head.

Tiki Ghosts - the faded spirits of long departed Tiki gods, forever losing more of their mass. The half-masks were perfect, but I wanted them to be missing parts of their bodies as well. Some quick work with a Dremel and I'd created some seriously beaten Minimate bodies.

The next step was applying the glow-in-the-paint. I'd never worked with the paint before, and I soon learned that to really make it glow in the dark, you need a really thick coat. And I discovered that the more you apply, the more it stops becoming paint and takes on a consistency of plastic. So I wasn't able to get the nice, smooth paint job I wanted, but they do glow nicely in the dark.

Here's a picture of the ghosts in partial darkness:

And one in total darkness. You can see that the glow-in-the-dark paint really works, but you can't see it well because of my crummy camera.

And for fun, here's a picture of the ghosts under a colored flashlight. Disco ghosts!

The Recipe

The Tiki Ghosts were made from repainted Minimates. Their deformed Tiki masks were made using my custom tiki mask mold and leftover Magic Sculpt. Their worn and hole-filled appearance was made with a Dremel and various drill bits. Both ghosts were painted with a heavy coat of glow-in-the-dark paint, then given a light wash of green for added depth and some color.

Originally posted October 2012