Message From Chris
My name is Chris Noriega, and I am a 36-year-old mechanical engineer with a passion for 3D printing, art, and costume making. Originally from San Antonio, I permanently moved to Dallas in 2015 to continue my career in engineering. From a young age I have been interested in art. Halloween 2008 is where I began my journey into creating 3-dimensional art. I wanted to reproduce outfits and costumes I’d seen from my favorite video game, Final Fantasy 11. Not being skilled with clay or paper mâché mediums, I turned to a new form of creating physical objects, 3D Printing. This medium allowed me to model on the computer what I envisioned while also adhering to my perfectionist nature in getting the shapes just right.
Ever since I watched the movie Labyrinth as a child, I have liked the idea of a masquerade party and when the opportunity arose to create masks, I took it. I made a series of mask designs that I named Demon, Goblin, Gremlin, and Human. They were painted and decorated with different techniques that I experimented with to get the coloring I was looking for. Acrylic paint with a matte/gloss mixture varnish, acrylic paint with resin coat mixed with glitter, decorative paper glued and coated with resin, or airbrushed metallic acrylic. Some of the masks are adorn with jewels and feathers to make them stand out as they did in the Labyrinth.
“My Favorite Piece…”
My favorite piece is the Human shaped mask painted in hues of blue and silver, specs of silver glitter with leaf jewels and winged feathers. Initially when I started to create this mask I was going for a simple woodland elf look. As I added more of the colors, jewels, and feathers it grew from that idea into a more elegant concept. The shape of the crescent plates on the sides followed by white and blue feathers made it feel majestic. The shimmer of the leaf jewels matched that sense of elevated status which is reinforced by the weight of the mask as you wear it.
