mask mood board Africa

African masks 

One of my ideas was to do an African mask the reason behind this was that i was watching a documentary about tribes in Africa and thought that they  looked really cool and wanted to design one for the project. So i made this mood board with lots of different mask shapes and styles.

Chinese masks

Masks in China are an age old tradition that are  used by all people   to ward off beasts and ghosts. The masks were a way of communicating with the gods at the time to bring about blessings,
they where formed into different types styles sutch as   Tibettan  masks, sorcerers' masks in yunnan and Shaman masks and dramatic masks.
They are not used as much only for entertainment purposes some masks worth a lot of money.

Japan (Noh masks)











Masks in Japan have been around for a very long time from 10,000 bc to 300 bc.

There were only 60 types of  masks, they where called ( Noh-men or omote ) 
but today there are now 200 kinds of masks that represent different things such as non human people called (kijin) to animals ( kitsune ) 
All Noh mask wearers are male, in most cases the main actor.
Because they are wearing them for such a long time they are made out of lightweight Japanese cypress. 
The rarest mask is held in a  private collection of the head of the Noh school and the most ancient is held in the most ancient Noh schools its said to be carved back in 574-622 bc.

Venetian Masks

They are a very old style of mask, centuries old tradition, they are worn around the time of the carnival of Venice but have also been used on other events as well.
There is little evidence why they wear masks in Venice, people say that it was to cover the identity of famous people at  parties.

A law passed in 1339 stopped the Venetians from wearing vulgar outfits while wearing masks or from having fake beards and hair, in the 18th century mask wearing was restricted to 3 months in the year.

One of the most famous mask types is the Medico della pesta ( plague doctor )
it did not start out as a carnival mask but  was first used to stop spreading illness. And was made by French physician Charles de lorme, it is depicted as white consisting of a hollow beak they used to fill the beak with flowers to cover up the smell of dead people and disease and they thought that it would stop them from getting ill



  This is my own style African mask where i crossed it over with steam  punk with the goggles on the eyes and the respirator round the mouth with the gas bottle on the side  

These masks are developments from my African mask style ,
I now know i do not what to do a full face mask because its not mysterious if you can see part of their face you wonder who is that person is witch is more exciting when you cover  the whole face its like you have taken the persons identity.
where as with a half mask it adds to there identity.