Lincoln, Larger Than Life

I was fortunate enough to be one of five hair punchers on this beautiful 2:1 scale art piece by the great Kazuhiro Tsuji.  It was unveiled last night at the Makeup Artist Trade Show in LA.

If you don't know who Kazu is, have a gander at his IMDB page.  I think he's the best makeup artist around, and an incredibly nice guy, to boot.  It was such an honor to be helping with his creation and learning how he works.

None of these pictures do the piece justice.  Kazu's sculpture, paint, and eyeballs are incredible.  After sitting nose to nose with this thing for a week, I kept being amazed with how intricate and perfect it all is.

There were actually two identical Lincoln busts produced.  I believe I did the eyelashes, beard stubble on the cheeks, and some of the hair on the back of the head of this one.

Here's the whole crew.  A lot of very talented people.

Good Evening...

On the workbench.   Look familiar yet?  Stay tuned.

Curiouser and Curiouser

I found myself with a few hours in the days before Halloween, so I decided to set up the wishing well prop from the film I just finished next to my Haunted Tombstone (a new one that I just put together out the morning of Halloween (I'm telling you, it doesn't get any easier than this!)).  I also hung up the Halloween windsocks from an old friend.  I may not have had time for a full haunt, but at least I could pass out candy.

I'd say we had about 10 trick-or-treaters, but we heard another 20 kids walk right by throughout the night without knocking.  I don't know how normal these numbers are for homes that don't go all out like I used to, but three or four other houses on our street got really into the decorations, and there are plenty of kids who live on the street.  I tried different configurations of porch light, strobe light, sound effects.  Nothing seemed to make a difference.  It felt like an episode of The Twilight Zone: The Halloween No One Knocked.


Incidentally, I need to get rid of this wishing well.  Shoot me an email if you'd like to have it.

The End of The End of Forever, part 1: Blisters and Muscles

Whew!  Where to begin?  This past Sunday, we finally wrapped on "The End of Forever," the short film I mentioned a few weeks ago.  It was probably the most intensive and draining project I've done to date.  Sure, I've had haunts that include a lot more, but this was compressed into a few short weeks doing props, sets, costumes, makeup effects, a creature suit, and probably a dozen other things that have since slipped my mind.  I prepped for a couple months for two weekends of shooting.

Like the film I did last fall, I'm going to break this into a few posts.  This first one will focus on the makeup effects for the film.

First was this large torn face an neck, done as a two piece gelatin prosthetic. In the story, one character makes a wish that causes his girlfriend to undergo gruesome changes.   I also had a prosthetic on top of this prosthetic that acted as the skin she tears off to reveal the muscles and bone underneath.

That's our wonderful beauty makeup artist, Jenny Hou doing touch ups.

There was also a tiny prosthetic I called a "starter," which started the tearing sequence.  It was basically just a little flap of skin she could pull down.

Next was this cheek piece.  Originally this was supposed to be the first time her skin peels off, and the larger one would last the rest of the film, but when we did the makeup test, it became clear that this piece would be much better in movement and comfort for multiple scenes and days of shooting.  Though originally cast in a stone mold, I remolded it for the second weekend with silicone so the sometimes tissue thin gelatin appliances could be made more easily.  It was a great experience getting to apply this piece four times, learning and improving my technique with each one.

I would apply and color the prosthetic, and then Jenny would apply beauty makeup on top of it all.  The first photo is my underpainting, and the second is with makeup.

Okay, now the fun stuff.  Not only does her face peel off, but blisters burst on her arms.  I was having trouble figuring out exactly how to do the effect when Steve Johnson put out a video on a technique used at his studio using plastic.

Here's a video of the effect I ended up with.  Note that this was taken while demoing the effect for the crew after the actual shot for the film, so the seam at the beginning is visible, but check it out.  Everyone seemed really excited about how it looked.



Basically, the effect was achieved by hiding a plastic bladder under a pre-slit gelatin cover prosthetic.  I stood behind the actress and just blew air into the tube.

Up next: Building the top of the creepy wishing well.