I'm sure there's more involved than simply that, but you get the idea. With a similar mould,
it wouldn't be much different to apply a thinner skin for purposes as a suit. Thin where
needed, thick where padding is needed.
In most of these dolls, the head is created seperately and then attached to the body.
In the case of Superbabe (shown above), the breasts are also applied seperately from
inside the body's skin. This allows for a different mix of silicone to be used. When
it's all together, you can't even tell that there's any sort of seperation.
As you can see in the pictures, the head is hollow to begin with. With this empty shell,
the eyes can be put into place from inside. Also, whatever pocket is used for oral sex
would also be inserted before the head is filled in solid with additional silicone or foam.
Again, imagine these same heads with a thinner skin. Bingo! You've got some great
looking masks!
Here's a nice shot of Natori's Photogenic Doll with it's open interior option for installing
animatronic equipment. The walls are much too thick for any practical masking purpose,
but it gives you a nice idea of what could be. Also this particular doll is designed at about
80% normal human size. It looks cute to have around and play with, but it's size makes
it impractical for masks or suits. Unless of course, you're that small.
The main reason you'll hear from these doll creators as to why they won't make masks
from their designs, is the material. Silicone does not breath. What this means, is that if
you were to encase your body with silicone, you would quickly sweat and overheat. Air
simply does not pass through the silicone enough for any sort of natural ventilation.
Latex also does not breath, but is commonly used in fetish clothing because it is stronger,
and less tear resistant than silicone. This makes it harder and less fleshlike, but it can be much
thinner. Also the expense of making the odd suit or two is not practical for the
time and money that's gone into developing the moulds. There are several
reasons why silicone is used on these dolls instead of latex. First of all, it's not allergenic.
Many people have an allergy to latex, and that could be very dangerous. Second, silicone
is much more flexible and stretchy. It's much closer in appearance to skin than latex, and
moves more like it.
There are a number of different latex and silicone based alternatives available.
I'll be looking into some of those and what they're pros and cons would be to using
them for masks.
Added 10/30/04
There are also several robotics projects going on around the world.
Several are trying to create humanoid robots that will eventually be
able to do the chores of real humans. The development of computer artificial
intelligence (AI) is a huge part of these projects. Many researchers believe that
this AI has to be "learned" by the computer from the very basics, just a human
child would do. They also believe that expression recognition within social interaction
is a huge part to this learning procedure. So many robotics projects attempt to make
their robots looks human. This is often achieved with the use of silicone skins, made
very much the same way that love dolls, as discussed above, are being made.
Below is a picture from a Chinese robotics project that shows the silicone skin made
for a childlike robot. To the left is the empty skin. To the right, is the robot itself.
This just shows how much closer the possibility of recreational
silicone skins may be.
Click here for a bit more information about the different brands of dolls available, along with links to their respective sites.