Since I wanted to do Jessica Rabbit for our Clan theme costume of Steampunk Disney for the Texas Reniasance Festival. As described in post "Steampunk Roger and Jessica Rabbit, Pt 1." My better half was volunteered to be Roger. I have to give him props... he didn't hesitate or complain. We just jumped into the planning phase. This was a little more difficult. Since my costume rendition did not align with the cartoon feel we didn't want to build roger that way either. We toyed with using a face prosthetic and makeup. Aviator cap with ears coming out and many other ideas, some difficult and some simple. We finally landed on a leather mask. 
Thanks to EPBOT for their detailed account of their beautiful mask we endeavored to try our hand at the Leather Mask. We were armed with the knowledge of how to accomplish our goal. The EPBOT mask is utterly amazing (click link above to see it) but it was a bit feminine for My roger and theirs was also the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. He wanted something a little more ominous. Our mask was inspired by Teonova @ Deviant Art. The craftsmanship is absolutely amazing. Props to Teonova!
We also watched many YouTube videos, our favorite being this one by Angelic Artisan.
There isn't really a pattern available for what we were looking for so I started by "Mapping" his face with a piece of felt. It was just me putting the felt on him and marking where his eyes were and where the bottom and top of the mask should fall. The pattern turned out pretty good and looked a little like this. 
In order to make the ears and eyes symmetrical I used the second eye as a guide and flipped the pattern to make the second half of the mask. We used 8oz vegetable tanned leather to make the mask and the soak, bake, shape method to create it. I am not a procrastinator, I work best in a deadline induced panic... so the night before the big camping trip we began to soak and shape. We soaked the mask in water until no more air bubbles escaped.
At 10pm we set the oven for 170 (gotta use the lowest setting to keep from burning the leather). We used a cookie sheet with parchment paper and built up a parchment paper bridge for when the mask is no longer flat. Once the mask was soaked we placed it in the oven for 15 minutes. We then pulled it out and started shaping. This process was surprisingly not as complicated as we had anticipated. Before the mask cools all the way put it back in the oven for 5 minutes, pull it out and shape it some more... repeat until the desired shape is achieved then bake for 20-30 minutes until the mask is dry. Here are some pics of the process.
Since it was late and at the last minute we opted to simply make the mask white like Roger with little detail as initially planned. We used an acrylic based spray primer paint since the acrylics were not applying properly to the leather. Once the color was even we applied a clear gloss sealer.
NOTE: Don't paint the part of the mask that is touching the face. Fumes and chemicals can be damaging to the wearer.
The Final product! For our very first leather project it turned out quite nice if I do say so myself.
My guy would not wear red pants more than once so in an effort to ensure the costume would have a long useful life we found some awesome leather pants at Good Will as well as the vest. I made the shirt the previous year. to tie the pants to Rogers red overalls I made spats out of the material I used for my bustle to tie us together.
For the Tail we used an old scrap fir coat I got at a thrift store for the sole purpose of using it's parts. We cut the end of the sleeve off, I sewed it up and stuffed with poly fill. we attached it to his pants with a kilt pin.
I really loved the outcome! I cannot wait until next year. I'll keep you posted :)
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