Transfers

I had two student film projects come up this past week that needed some makeup effects.  One called for a slit throat, and the other needed a strange, infected, fantasy wound.

There's a relatively new technique I've been reading about called 3D Transfers that can be applied really quickly, which makes a big difference on a student film's tight schedule, so I thought I'd give it a try.  You sculpt the appliance, mold it, cast it, and apply it like a temporary tattoo before coloring it.

Here's how they turned out.  Most of the veins are sculpted and painted on here.  I think it's pretty successful, though there are still a few things I'd change, in retrospect.

 Before blood

With blood

 The slit throat appliance came out a little dark, so it took a lot of makeup to get it close to the actress's skin tone.  The main reason it still looks a little funky is that it was so cold at the beach that day that she had goosebumps, which the texture of my appliance didn't match.  I was also asked to put it lower on the throat than it was meant to be.  Oh well.  It was still good practice.

A lot of detail is lost when these transfer appliances dry and shrink, so I'll have to make sure to exaggerate the sculpt more next time.

Post-'Palooza

Monsterpalooza!  Where else can you meet and chat with makeup effects legends Dick Smith and Greg Cannom (pictured with yours truly), as well as Bob Burns, and Andrew Clement (my mentor in the Dick Smith Advanced Professional Makeup Course)?

Here comes the rest of the pictures.  In all honesty, most of the displays weren't that cool, so I didn't take pictures of that stuff.  Of course, I missed a few good shots, too, but this should still give an idea of a few of the highlights.

Fellow haunter Mike Cathcart:

Mike Hill:

Casey Love Designs:

A few miscellaneous cool pieces:

Mickey Rotella:

A couple of movie props:

Andrew Clement/Creative Character Engineering:

Jordu Schell:

They aren't all horror movies...

Sure, it's fun to make demon books and werewolf teeth, but sometimes these film projects need something a little less monstrous.  The film I'm working on this weekend needed three different, non-copyrighted jars of peanut butter, so I played around in Photoshop and ran off some new labels to fit the jars the director bought.

I like quick projects like this because you get to see the results and move on to the next one.

Pumpkin Practice

Since it came up recently on the CalHauntS NorCal email list, here's a short example of my version of a talking pumpkin with a little glimpse of how it's done. It still needs some polishing, particularly towards the end, but I like the way this looks better than some of the other ones I've seen. It's more how I picture a carved pumpkin would move, and I like that the movements are based on something real, rather than some computer program that analyzes the sound wave.