Best Blood Recipie

[Sickie Ickie]

I used to make a peanut butter based one, but I recently was introduced to a very very simple blood recipie that I've used successfully on film. It can be made lighter or darker and has a nice arterial blood look.

Warm chocolate syrup in the microwave and add red food coloring, then mix. Add a little water to spray from a bottle, or apply "as is" to prosthetics already on the face or body.

I like it because besides having a nice coloring for HD, it becomes more sticky as it dries making a nice thick texture for shine and drips.

As an added bonus- unlke Dick Smith's recepie, it is non-toxic.

Before you ask, although it makes logical sense, STRAWBERRY does not look good in my opinion. Much too much red and florescent pink looking.

Try it yourself and see!

[Bone Dancer]

Karo syrup ( clear) and food coloring--
I used it as a decoration on some food and it worked ok and was ediable.

[Sickie Ickie]

I'll bet that tastes yummy on food. :-)

I've tried that plus blue on prosthetics a while ago, but the camera picked it up as too fakey looking. :-/ Just one of the blood recipies that didn't work for me.

[Spartan005]

corn syrup and red food dye is PERFECT. Trust me, I used it last year and it looks great!

[ScareShack]

SI....on the syrpe recipe...how long does it last...like it gets hard and will stay untill wet? Any other methods for making blood?
thanks for the tip.

[Dr Morbius]

I tried that..took a nap and was covered in ants! Ok..just kidding. It was just one ant.

[Sickie Ickie]

Heyya Johnny. :D It drys a nice shade for the camera and lasts until washed off. It stay wet long enough to run nice drips,and then stays put which the directors appreciate for continuity for the films. No, it doesn't get hard, and it stays flexible.

Lots of other blood recepies. Many use peanut butter for thicker blood. I like Dick Smith's blood, but it is toxic if ingested and I tend to stay on the non-toxic side because actors often do things they shouldn't with the blood (tasting, deciding they want a look of blood on the lips, biting their nails with bloody hands, etc.)

I have a great non-toxic pus and white cell, too. :D

[Lilly]

Ok Sickie how do you make the "pus"?
will you share please.

[Sickie Ickie]

Sure, for puss I use cheap lemon icing [Jewel brand is usually fine], add crushed generic corn flakes for texture and as a thickener, and color with delta ceramcoat light foliage green [or darker]. That's an acrylic paint, but in my exerience non-toxic-ish that won't cause you harm or ill-effects in small amounts in case of accidental ingestion.

Fresh white cells can be created with the same lemon icing, but just add some water to make it thinner. More of a mayonnaise or pudding consistancy. This should be just dabbed on in spots next to or over the puss. Since it is thinner, it tends to run over the course of time when heated up by body temp making it look as if it were oozing from small punctures.

Apply puss with a plastic knife over sculpted cuts already painted a base coat with the same paint. Dab some white cells on with a q-tip and you have some nice repulsive gore. :D

[Lilly]

sounds good ... not to eat though... thanks

[Sickie Ickie]

Lilly, you may be able to use food coloring if applying to food, but you somehow have to counteract the shamrock bright green to make it darker...

[Lilly]

Sickie that's true for food items but, I'm thinking of doing a corpse being eaten by rats something like that in a clear box type thing ( if you saw "bones" episode- like that)...hoping to get scraps of plexiglass for sturdiness from some guys in the biz, but if not I will think of something else to use like clear thicker plastic.
I am thinking of maybe experimenting with gorilla glue or great stuff and try and color that so its more permanent and then it wont attract bugs, which would be nice effect but a nuisance.

[Hauntiholik]

Lilly-
Skeleton Coast sells a hot glue product called "Hot Blood".
http://www.skeletoncoast.com/Products/Hot%20Blood/HotBlood.html

[Lilly]

Thanks Hauntiholik..that stuff looks cool

[Sickie Ickie]

haunt, I wonder if you could get the same thing by mixing acrylic paint with heated/melted hot glue, then pour it into molds the shape of glue sticks?

[Lilly]

That might work sickie..but I know food coloring doesn't mix very well with hot glue I tried that it did color it somewhat but not very good..maybe if i had something to keep it melted all the time it would ...anyone use anything or know of something to keep hot glue melted like that ?
that would work great for static props blood and pus and no flies.
but may have to check out reg ole elmers glue i'm sure that would color good.

[Revenant]

Sickie --

I think you're on the right track in making your own hot glue blood sticks but I don't think acrylic paint is the way to go. Hot glue sticks are really a low-temp thermoplastic (EVA I think) with waxy stuff in it, I don't think anything water based would want to mix. And some of the other stuff in the paint might mess with the thermal properties. But adding dry universal pigments just might work. Hell, I think it's a good bet that's what those blood sticks in the ad actually are. Those universal's go a long way so your biggest expense would be for the glue sticks.

The stage blood I've made for the movies I worked is Karo and red food color with some hersheys syrup and universal pigments to adjust the tint and darkness. I add cocoa powder if it's going to be drying because that makes the thin smears dry a nice rusty color.

[slimy]

The best blood thing I do is: take a razor blade and make a small inscetion above my eyebrow. This works better if you do a bunch of jumping jacks before hand. Then just let it drip on whatever you want gorified, and wham bam, you got crimson.

No karo, no hot glue, just pure fun.

[Sickie Ickie]

Interesting Rev, I've not tried using cocoa powder...but I will now. :D

[Sickie Ickie]

I think I'll experiemnt with the acrylic and hot glue just for the fun of it and post the results. :D

[PhantomMyst]

For blood that needs to be washed out of costumes withj no worries, I use a laundry detergant based blood. A gallon of arm and hammer laundry detergant, red food dye, and chocolate sauce. The soap makes it good to wash out and the chocolate balances the bright red color of the red dye. Also red pigments are used to better insure no staining. You can get these through pretty much any FX supply company. Unfortunately the detergant blood is fairly thin, so to thicken it up you can add a material called cabosyl (sp?) which a thikckening agent.

[infoamtek]

The major problem I've found with the Karo, red food coloring, chocolate syrup formula is that the actors will guzzle it from the bottle. And there's nothing worse than twitchy monsters on a sugar rush.

[Sickie Ickie]

I found an interesting blood recipie for fountains. It's highly toxic, but I guess who is going to drink from a bloody skull fountain? From the pics it looks realistic:

http://wolfstone.halloweenhost.com/HalloweenTech/fntbld_FountainBlood.html

[Revenant]

Woohoo! Thanks Sickie! The biggest problem I always had with flowing blood effects was loss of opacity when it got thin enough to run. This stuff looks great! I still haven't found the ultimate non-toxic thin running blood but the R&D continues.

Ooh, hey, have you tried making the blood glue sticks yet?

[Sickie Ickie]

Not yet. I want to get the molds for the sticks first so I can pour the melts into them.

[Sickie Ickie]

Okay, I made a very rough test stick today as an experiment. Nearly ruined a pyrex dish to do it! LOL

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h231/Sickie_Ickie/000_0367.jpg

Here's the result. The red is my homemade blood stix, the orange is a regular glue stick going through after the blood stix, and the clear is glue before the blood stix.

I'm not totally happy with it, but it gives me encouragement to continue to the next step up. :)

[playfx]

Looks good SI, maybe add a pinch of blue to make it alittle darker. What kinda paint did you use with the glue?

[Sickie Ickie]

Acrylic craft paint in the 2oz bottle. I melted rod of glue stick in a glass bowl by putting in in the oven. When melted it was a straight line, so I made a line of paint next to it and mixed it together. then as it was cooling I rolled itup like a rolling paper.

I don't have the mixing proportions right yet, and because the rod was uneven and hollow, I nearly destroyed my old glue gun, but at least I'm encouraged to go on.

Probs so far: nearly destroying my pyrex dish, nearly destroying my glue gun because of irregular hollow rod, and some occasional mild smoking at the tip of the glue gun- prob due to uneven mixing of the glue and pygments. Working on experiment #2...

[infoamtek]

It sounds a lot cheaper in the long run to buy the hot blood sticks. Why reinvent the wheel?

[Lilly]

Thanks for experimenting sickie..
now I don't have too
Ps thanks for the fountain blood recipe
A word of caution to pet owners here...and people with small children
Please keep this high enough away from cats and dogs,kids , if the anti rust stuff is anything like the anti freeze it will kill them if they drink it.

[Lilly]

Infoamtek..
Sometimes we like to just try things and if we can find a way that is cheaper for us to use something else to make something ... then thats what we do..
It's all part of our Do IT YOURSELF thing.
If you yourself have any ideas that say hey i did this an easier way or whatever please share it..we would love to hear them.
One more person with ideas would be great.

[Sickie Ickie]

Couldn't have said it better myself Lilly. heh Infoamtek, you could just buy it if you wanted to, and indeed many people do. I'm more the kind to experiment and see if I can develop alternative methods to not only make things cheaper, but have some educational fun along the way and add my own twist. For example, blood sticks are red, but what if I want blue or green or a custom color? The experimental challenge is set before me! :D

[Revenant]

Besides, you can adjust tints and shades to your own liking to match your other blood! That always kinda annoys me in movies when there's like 4 different colors of blood in the different scenes.

[BlinkyTheHouse Elf]

Here is a Recipe we use in Hollywood and it taste good too !!

1-pack of cherry jello mixed with clear karo sryup dont cook it. and no water.
it sets up GREAT and looks like the real thing and looks good on film.

[Sickie Ickie]

Neat idea Blinky! :D