Here is Mike Tyson, gap-toothed smile, tribal face tattoo and all. Over there, Donald Trump, his straw-colored hair in dire need of a trim.
These aren’t really faces; they’re masks. But they are unlike any you can find at costume stores around Halloween. First, starting at $500, they’re more expensive than your run-of-the-mill rubber disguise an order of magnitude. But you get what you pay for: Meier’s HyperFlesh masks are scary realistic, so much so that they draw nearly the same attention as a famous face.
Or, for some, a back-up famous face. Actor Charlie Sheen owns his visage in HyperFlesh. “Breaking Bad” star Bryan Cranston famously wore a version of his face from “Breaking Bad” to a panel at Comic Con in 2013. As our video crew was wrapping up a shoot at his home studio, Meier was running late to overnight the Tyson mask to a customer he believes to be pop mogul Drake, just in time for Halloween.
Meier experienced the impact his masks can have in April at Monsterpalooza, a Hollywood makeup and FX trade show. There, he enlisted the help of two kids to wear the masks of President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and T-shirts depicting nuclear mushroom clouds. Clad in a tracksuit, Meier donned a Vladimir Putin mask. A friend filmed a brief clip of the three dancing to Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk” and uploaded it to Facebook.
Part political statement, part advertisement, part fun, the video became an internet sensation, racking up 69 million views in the 6 months since, and growing Hyperflesh’s log of back-orders.
“It just blows your mind, that volume of attention,” Meier said. “And that was just a little 30-second video with zero production value.”
In our culture of celebrity worship, spending thousands of dollars to live the fantasy of being the apple of the public eye, even briefly, isn’t surprising. Next to “I Want A Famous Face,” a reality show based on— surgeons who put knife to skin to make their patients look like their favorite stars, it’s downright quaint.
“People like them because they’re really good likeness masks,” Meier said.
But the initial intent of Meier’s creations was to make the world uneasy, not starstruck.
Meier started making the masks in 2000 as a hobby after graduating from Colorado State University’s fine arts program the year prior.
“I thought, what if I could do something that’s really surreal but very realistic,” Meier said of the initial concept.
He began fashioning masks of over-sized baby heads in his basement. The result — an adult with the head of a baby — is an unforgettable mix of hilarious and horrifying. Meier sells three models of the baby on his website — Disgusted, Happy and Cry Baby — starting at $500.
“It—hits that uncanny valley,” Meier said.
The term Meier is referencing strikes at the heart of his HyperFlesh masks. Coined in the 1970s by robotics professor—Masahiro Mori, it describes the feeling of revulsion evoked by objects designed to look human, but fall just short.
Counting surrealists like Salvador Dali and H.R. Geiger –—”anything weird and nightmarish” — as influences, Meier considers his masks art. He’s a sculptor by trade, and used to push and pull his molds by hand out of clay.
Now that he’s switched over to a 3D printer, which helps him dial in pore-perfect likenesses, he clicks and drags on a digital ball of clay. For celebrities, he references the internet, scouring for photos of the same facial expression from different angles. After he’s shaped the facial structure on his computer, his 3D printer (made by Loveland’s Aleph Objects) prints out a mold. Meier then fills the mold with silicon and painstakingly paints each freckle, blemish and mottled cheek by hand. In all, the masks take from 40 to 150 hours to complete.
The key to Meier’s creations is in the name. The skin is semi-translucent, the result of a proprietary blend of silicon, pigments and other top-secret ingredients. He’s constantly refining his mixture, and estimates he’s gone through 100 different combinations of skin recipes in his quest to create what he calls “accurate flesh.”
The masks range from $500 to more than $14,000, the starting price for any one of Meier’s made-to-order one-offs. The requests are almost always for celebrities. He’s done masks of Robert Downey Jr., Stephen Colbert, Bernie Sanders and others; if you have the photos and money, it can probably be done.
Whether it’s a good idea is another matter. Meier’s masks are so realistic that one of his customers could viably fool the public into thinking they’re the celebrity, and profit off their influence or effectively defame them.
Meier said that he’s protected by his constitutional right to freedom of speech.
“I haven’t run into any trouble yet,” Meier said. “If a celeb asks, I’ll make them one for free. And then we’re usually all good.”
Porn star Ron Jeremy discovered Meier had made a mask of his face and called him to make a verbal agreement, asking Meier to pay him $250 for every mask that he sold. (He hasn’t sold one yet.)
Some masks aren’t worth the risk. Popular sports blog Bleacher Report wanted a mask of the internet-famous image of Michael Jordan crying. Jordan is notoriously litigious; Meier said no. The blog settled on a—Tom Brady mask instead, which made it onto NBC’s “Today” show, growing HyperFlesh’s profile that much more.
So long as he can pour “flesh,” he can basically print money. But his ambitions go beyond HyperFlesh. Prosthetic companies have been in contact about using his techniques to help people with facial injuries.
Then there’s the artistic potential. There’s great power in conjuring Trump, Putin and Kim — or their spitting images, anyway — in a room on demand.
And besides, looking through a mask to change your worldview is so last century.
“Nobody’s even going to care about any of this soon, because virtual reality is going to get so good,” Meier said. “Just put on an Oculus (Rift, a virtual reality headset), and you realize humanity is doomed.”
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