In the week leading up to Halloween night, theme parties and events start popping up like pumpkins, to which you can arrive equipped with witches and Dracula costumes. Like any self-respecting holiday, Halloween is also accompanied by a good dose of stereotypes and images that are repeated ad nauseam. Witches and Dracula costumes are certainly among them, so better to try, at least this year, to look for a more original alternative.
The British design studio Wintercroft could be your save in the weekend. In fact, since 2013 Wintercroft makes 3D paper masks, strictly to be made at home and with recycled materials. In fact, the masks can be made by anyone, just by buying the digital templates to cut out (8€), fold and glue.
Modeling the masks thus becomes a simple craftsmanship experience, unlike those vessels “on newsstands in 30 convenient issues”, to build and paint with a brush, which discourage even before you start buying them.
Born from the need of the founders to find a last minute mask for Halloween, Wintercroft costumes are not only an original idea but also sustainable. By sending a design online, production costs, energy and resources used for the distribution of orders are reduced. A theme, that of the environment, to which the brand is close since the collaboration with Greenpeace for the campaign #ProtectAntarctic, especially for penguins.
Steve Wintercroft, founder of the brand, also sees the masks as a kind of therapy. “These masks provide a therapeutic and satisfying way to connect with a side of ourselves that we may not have even known was there.” A sort of inner spirit guide to be given a face, made of paper, in 3D.
The design of the masks is based on Low Poly, a 3D modeling technique typical of the first videogames, in which, in order to lighten the heaviness of the designs, volumes were composed with flat faces, creating harder outlines and sharp geometries.
From the skull to the devil mask, by now there are no more excuses to show up at Halloween with the skeleton outfit of last year, and the year before, and the year before that.
