Killers hands Special Effects Investigation

Because of our idea of the killers diary, I decided to do an investigation into what the killers hands would look like- being that there may be close ups of it within the film opening that we are going to make, when the killer is writing in the diary.

Researching around, I could not find any inspiration for "killers hands" in any slasher movies, or even on Google. Not even the film seven was much help, as even though in the opening credits you see sections of the killers fingers, you never see his entire hand. This being said, I had a go anyway, improvising on the different hands that our killer could have.

The first thing that I did was to cover the hand in liquid latex. This, when the fingers were touching, made the latex stick to itself, making strings of the material going between her fingers, which I thought was a really cool effect.

I then pulled holes in the latex, adding layers of it so that it looked like blisters and saws. I then covered the hand in old looking scars, as if the killer had been badly burnt several years ago. This could possibly link to a back story of the killer, showing the motivation for killing people, for him. Above is an image of the final product.

I then tried out another design for the killers hands. A much more subtle makeup showing some nasty scrapes and blisters on the skin, along with a couple of older scars across the hand. This would be a more realistic representation of the hand, however the deformity of burn scars or another modification would be good as an introduction to the back story of why the killer is doing what he is doing.

The final experimental hand for the killer that I created was the one shown above. This is a rather gory, however linking to the slasher genre, piece with three nasty wounds. The first, and most obvious is the finger that has been cut off. Then there is a knuckle injury and a horrible looking blister. This design is rather extreme, and could be used as a thing towards the end of the film- of which we wont be doing- but its a good idea- or after a particularly nasty struggle of one of his victims.

Overall, from the different experiments that I have carried out, I feel that if we combine the idea of a physical deformity leading to the back story of his motivation to kill, and this deformity being a shock to the audience, making him look therefore scarier, but also the less gory more subtle look to make it look more natural- he wouldn't have open bloody wounds all the time.