Yubaba Head

Inspiration

This piece was for a group Halloween costume of the three main characters of the Studio Ghibli movie Spirited Away, with me as Sen, my dad as No Face, and my mom as Yubaba!

Ghibli movies have always had a special place in my heart, and Spirited Away is no exception.  My mom and dad collaborated on making No Face, while my mom and I worked on Yuaba!  She's the main villain in Spirited Away, and I really wanted to capture her distinctive design.

Process

First, we took a hat that fit Mom well and used wire to create the general shape of the hair, nose, and eye sockets.  We used a foam support to keep the hair from collapsing on itself.

After the base skeleton was created, we filled in the rest of the hair, and a bit of the jawline.  We used tissue paper as the first layer of the paper mâché!  To get the bottom of the hair round enough we used balloons as a support.

Most of her face has an underlayer of foam to define it, including her cheekbones and nose.

To get the wrinkles on her face, we used hot glue to build them up!  The bulge/wart thing between her eyebrows was also layered up in hot glue.  To give the hair a different texture from her skin, we used strips of bedsheets, which also helped define the grain of her bun.

All of the paint was acrylic, and we kept the highlights and shadows simple to mimic the Ghibli art style!

Results

I'm very proud of how this turned out!  It's definitely recognizable as Yubaba, and even though its an accurate size to her character (very large) it's still lightweight!  The fabric strips worked well on her hair, and we got the colors accurately too.

Reflection

While I am very proud of this piece, I think I would be more methodical about constructing it in the future.  The whole thing was very experimental, and while it was a success I think it would have even better if I tried it again!