Made by Gattis Middle School Students
Hello! I wanted to share how beautifully my Theatre students used your mask template for our production of The Lion King Jr. this week. The kids absolutely loved the process, and their masks turned out stunning—bold, expressive, and truly stage-ready.
Your template gave them the perfect foundation to understand form, structure, and character expression. We used it for lions, hyenas, zebras, and more, and the students took so much pride in customizing each one. Many of them said mask-making became their favorite part of the entire production!
Thank you for providing such a wonderful resource. It made a huge impact on our show and helped young artists feel successful and creative. I’m attaching photos of the finished masks so you can see how your work inspired ours.
We appreciate you!
Judy Williams
Theater Director Gattis Middle School
It looks like some fit right down on top of the actor’s head, others… they make molds of the actors heads and it fit’s down on it. Looking at this, and really loving your masks do you have any idea of how to adapt your current patterns (I purchased all the lions, the elephant, giraffes) to make it similar?
https://youtu.be/l7WmhNLFb9Q?si=WHULH3NIfdehyRJc&t=60
Judy, thank you so much for sharing photos of the masks your students created. They did a great job and they look really nice. And it’s even more fun to know how much they enjoyed making them. Tell them all “hi” for me. 🙂
I will! A suggestion would be to add a cap for the elephant and giraffes…we adapted from other templates but it took a lot of time.
Thank you ?
I’m working on a new giraffe pattern this very minute, to be used as a mask. I’ve intended to do it for years, but I’m finally getting around to it. It should be available in a few weeks. And it looks like you did use the bull elephant headdress mask pattern – it comes with a cap. Is that the one you meant? I also have a baby elephant wall sculpture pattern, but it doesn’t have any tusks.
I’d love to adapt to fit more like the head dresses from broadway (headband, no cap… basically the front face suspended above) any ideas or suggestions? We are doing another presentation with a new group of actors (and some in advanced class) so we are looking to improve overall.
Can you give us a link to a photo of one of the head dresses you’d like to use as a model?
this is a pretty good angle… it has some sort of band instead of a full cap…
https://25.media.tumblr.com/60a982e60714f305fa1dae266bf51e3c/tumblr_mk6fafls501s2brnwo1_500.jpg
From looking at the photo you linked to, I think you might be able to get that look just by adding some fabric on top of the cap portion of some of your masks. Getting them to balance correctly without straps going under the chin would be challenging, though. I looked at a lot of photos of the Broadway musical, and I can’t find any article that explains how the masks are constructed to keep them in place while the actors are dancing.