Halloween Nightmares at Blackburn Youth Zone...SFX, gore and monsters oh my!

Hello all,

Its been another busy week of prosthetics and SFX gore gore fun! Which I will be creating posts for very very soon. This week has literally been a router of teaching, reading, practicing, creating...which is my sort of work week! As a makeup artist it can be hard balancing all the work that needs to be completed as well as all the practising/trial runs but if the passion for the artistry is there then it makes it all worth while.

Last blog I talked about the casting and creating of the creeps, monsters and zombies used in the big Halloween project at Blackburn Youth Zone's live haunted house/ scare run event; now am going to share the application as well as the end result. I loved doing this project and hope to do many many more in future; seeing my designs come to life and run around scaring the crap out everyone...including me!...was amazing.
For the event I brought backup in the form of my fabulous media makeup students from Blackburn College (VRQ Media Makeup) This event was a chance for the students to experience working in the industry, my aim was to treat them as assisting makeup artists rather then as my students. All of them rose to the challenge, threw themselves into it and come out with big smiles on their faces from seeing what they helped achieve.

The first characters that we began applying makeup to were those playing the Scientists. The whole idea with the Haunted House/Scare Run turned into a storyline about Mad Scientists creating monsters and zombies so the "Grave Digger" characters turned into the Scientists.

The fabulous Katie and Lydia completed this makeup on one of the scientist characters, the design brief was to create a crazy mad person whose been up for days working on experiments.

 

I think you would agree the brief was met!

We created this look by using cream based foundations to create the illusion of ageing around the mouth, forehead, brows as well as contour her face shape to look a little more gaunt. Around the eyes we wanted to over exaggerate the redness and veins as these characters were performing under bright flashing lights as well as coloured spots. The eyes were the focus so they needed to be brought out.

Products used for this was Ben Nye's Master Bruise wheel and Master Death Wheel.

 

One of my favourite and biggest prosthetics of the night was the full face zombie. This prosthetics took ages to create and I had a specific look in mind for it. I wanted the character to look like he had torn his face off and all that was left was rotting muscle, bones and tissue.

Here Kate is working on apply the blood around the sides of the piece and applying around the eyes after it had been blended out using the silicone based product, Sculpt Gel.

 

Another one of my favourite prosthetics, well two, the torn mouth piece and the zombie brow. This did have to be tailored in a little as our model had a much smaller face in comparison to the original model. But that's the life of a SFX artist, working on the fly and get it done!

Here myself and Rhianna are working on blending those edges out and lining up the features so its a smooth seamless transition between the models skin and both prosthetics.

 

 

 Kate and myself found the jaw prosthetics a little trickier to attach in comparison to the other prosthetics, this was mainly because of the weight. It weighed a little more then is should of so, any, a little cutting was required to remove some of the bulk from inside the prosthetic. The adhesive that I used to attach all the pieces was MouldLife's Aqua Fix. I have used this for almost all my prosthetic creations as I find its the best, it also doesn't irritate the skin as others in the past have. Other bonus is that its a cheaper adhesive but still works well!

 

Selfies...a must for any Zombie creation!

Myself with my fabulous assistants Shannon and Rhianna with the most happiest and cheerful zombie I ever did meet.

 

 

So here are my two zombie characters all done up, they wore boiler suits which we covered in blood! Have to admit two of my favourite SFX Zombie characters, completely inspired by the Walking Dead!

So happy that my view came to life!

I think if I did it again, I would definitely change the positioning of the teeth on the girl Zombie, they totally look out of line and goofy!

 

 But you live you learn and that's how you grow!

 

 These two scared me!

They were the Chaser characters, and they ran after the people walking around the place. So its kind of fitting that they were utterly terrifying. One of the reasons behind this was that they chased after you with chainsaws, and these were real chainsaws with the chains removed so the noise that they made was UNREAL!

There were a few issues with one of the pieces not sticking to the actor, which resulted in use applying and reapply frequently.

 

Loved how they turned out.

My students haven't even completed there Media Makeup SFX unit yet and I think they did a super job at helping me bring my designs to life.

 

 Broken Jaw Zombie came out pretty damn well in the end, it was tricky due to the weight of the prosthetic piece but we sorted it out with a few little alterations. I think I want to play around with the attachment of this prosthetic further in the future. I want to redesign this one, so watch out for Broken Jaw Zombie 2.

 

This was one of the Crazy Crrrrrraaaazzzzy Scientists, the sharp teeth prosthetics piece worked really well even if it was originally meant to be one of the Minion characters.The mouth needs a dark black to disguise those lips but it came out pretty well!

 

All characters were done using Bdellium tools brushes, SFX range created by Thomas Surprenant who is an amazing effects artist, I had the pleasure to watch him create some fantastic characters at IMATS last year.

 

Like always we managed to get our self in the newspaper with the characters. This is the photo that they used which also included the "Exorcist" character in the middle, she was a blasted to know.

 

All in all I think it was a pretty successful night for both me, my students and Blackburn Youth Zone. The event brought a lot of people in and raised a lot of money for the Youth Zone, which I was glad to be apart of.

 

If you want to see more images from the night check out my facebook page @Ruth.E.Moulden.MUA and don't forget to like and follow me.

 

Also check out my Instagram @ruthemouldenmua

 

I'll be attending Manchester Vintage fair tomorrow with my popup salon, often some fabulous pampering treatments including manicure, gel nail polish as well as makeovers and hairstyling. Check out my Facebook page for more details on the event!

Halloween "Creeps and Creatures" designing and creating the prosthetics.

Am alive!!

I have to apologise for my absent with this blog, there has been a ridiculous amount of work going on which caused me to stop updating this blog BUT fear not I have returned with many creations and application that I want to share with the world!

So in this blog I will be detailing my Creeps and Creatures creation that were sculpted, casted and creating for the purposes of Blackburn Youth Zone's Halloween event. This has been the best job to date, I absolutely loved creating all these fantastic characters and I would not complain if this was my full time job; just creating monsters and creatures! Dream job.

Like with any creation, it all begins with a brief and whole load of doodles and design plans. The characters that I was given to create for where these rather marvellous nightmare delights....

We have "Exorcise character", Morgue victim, Grave Yard/Guide, Clown and "Chaser." Now there was a few changes on the day to these characters and a few adaptions needed due to the models changing which is a valuable lesson to anyone thinking of becoming a makeup artist or tackling this sort of project. ALWAYS HAVE BACK UPS!

Now my "Exorcise" characters was designed with the intent to use all manual effects to create the character. Ridge Collodion was my go to, this is an amazing product for creating fantastic realistic scars and indentations in the skin. I also aimed to use contouring and highlighting to give the illusion of sunken in features and an overall haggard look to the model.

The "Graveyard digger/Guide" was the character that was intended to guide the public around the areas of the "Haunted House", showing them the puzzles and making sure they took the right turn. This was one of the characters that changed on the day to "Mad Scientists", which was easy to adapt. I did create prosthetics pieces to change the features of the model.

 

What creepy demonic character isn't complete without a demonic brow ala Buffy The Vampire Slayer, this was part of my extra's kit for just incase I have an extra characters or the existing prosthetics don't fit the model. Everyone loves a demonic brow!

 

 

Quickest easiest way to change someone's face is to alter the shape/size of their nose and chin, which is the design plan I came up with for the Grave Diggers. I had the idea of character with sharp features (and teeth) similar to that of the Penguin from Batman. That creepy look with extra cuts/scars all over the face and again using highlighting and shading to contour the features to more sunken effect.

 

The next character I was brief on was for a character that chased the people around the event. I was told to do whatever I wanted but it has to be scary. So I came up with the cage face, as in the design plan behind the cage needs to appear black and the eyes need to be very dark.

As you will see soon this character once applied and the actors were in their costumes, scared the crap out of me!

 

 

Morgue Character was a cool one to create, they wanted my rib cast that I created for a different character. They wanted the model/actor to be led down on a morgue table with a cloth over them and to jump up when ever anyone was in the room. So they wanted a gruesome looking person rather then a monster. 

 

 

 The ribs took a while to create, as they made from latex rather then casted in gelatine like the other pieces. I needed the piece to be lighter then gelatine which meant using cotton and latex to build up in the mould rather then filling up the mould with latex.

This took about 3-4 days to fully complete and drying fully.

 

 

Love sculpting skulls, so I just had to have a clean half skull face for this morgue character. Teeth are enamel. 

The next characters was a bit of a homage to American Horror Story: Freak show, Twisty the clown. Love that character and it always instils fear into most people. So the mouth was inspired by that character with a few changes to the shapes.
The reason of the features are all manual applications with thick blood and manual cuts.

 

This character was my mad scientist one, well one the mad scientists. I had several actors who needs to talk so the makeup was kept manual on these characters and the big mouths were used on the ones that chased.

 

Here it is all painted up.

 

I had an absolute blast designing and sculpting these characters, in the next blog I will show you the end result and what happen on the night.

 

Don't forget to check out my Facebook, Instagram for up to date information on what's going on in my crazy crazy world.

 

I'll be trying super hard to keep up to date with this blog.

 

Any suggestions or requests just contact me in the contacts form.