Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Happy Halloween: Creating A Monster

Zombie Photographer
Question: What's the difference between a Photoshop makeup job and a real makeup job for Halloween? Answer A: About five hours and forty minutes. Answer B: You can't wear Photoshop to a Halloween Party.

The above image took roughly 20 minutes to put together.

The actual costume I wore to Saturday night's Halloween party took considerably more time. The steps were as follows:


Mastering Blood Spatter
Step 1: Start with clothes: Getting the right amount of blood in accurate splatter patterns is important to a truly scary costume. Using a combination of two different spray bottles, misting and streaming sprays, and a paint brush gives a nice variety of blood spatter patterns.

This is where being a fan of shows like CSI and Dexter come in handy. They are educational in art of creating accurate blood spatter.

Also included in this process was rubbing dirt and grass stains into the clothes as well as ripping and shredding the clothes to age them appropriately.

Total time 1 hour.



Drying the Blood
Step 2: Let the clothes dry.

This is a big deal that can take a day or more.






Mange Look

Step 3:  Hair.

This takes some willingness to sacrifice your ego, as the image on the right dictates.

And while you won't be making a fashion statement, you will make an impact to the effectiveness of the entire costume.

This included messing with the chin-pubes as well.

Of course, after the cutting of the hair you need to a shower.

Total Time: 1 Hour






Merely a flesh wound
Step 4: The facial makeup.

My thanks go to my lovely, understanding and uber-creative wife who created this process of wound generation from tissue paper, liquid latex and makeup.

This whole wound took about a half an hour to make. There was an additional ten minutes in makeup following to blend the wound into my real skin.

The initial preview of this image generated some visceral reactions from my friends on Facebook.

Exactly the reaction I was looking for.




Head Wound

The head wound was a risky choice, but one that paid off big time.

The risk was this: Liquid Latex is like gum, especially when it gets in your hair. But, look at the wound... it is simply amazing!

My wife rocked this makeup application.

This wound took about an another half an hour plus ten minutes for the makeup.

Gruesome as it looks, the application was painless.

I wish the same could be said about its removal.

After this, there was a thirty minute break because I was getting monkey-butt from sitting in the chair for so long.


Looks like it hurts
The final, most complicated wound was the head to neck gash on the left side of my face.

A similar process was used, but was one continuous stream of latex and tissue paper.

This took nearly 40 minutes to apply, plus the makeup time.

Then came the rest of the makeup.

Blood around the mouth; blood in the bald spots on my head; shadowing and general blending took another 20 minutes.

Total Time: 2 hours 10 minutes




The Bite
Of course after all that work, some photos were needed.

Bitten
The Attack
Incoming
Total time of application was four and half hours, plus a half an hour for Kim's bite.

Then we headed off to the party.

Total time of removal of the makeup and the latex, which definitely got in my hair, painfully in my hair, was a half an hour plus a shower for a total time of a one hour. Also, I had to finish shaving my head on Sunday for another hour, if the shower is included.

Total time: Six hours of makeup application and cleanup after the party.

Was it worth it? Completely! Because again, you can't wear Photoshop to a Halloween party.

By the way, in case you didn't guess it, I went to the party as a corporate zombie.

Happy Halloween from Creative Monkey Studios!