I recently started on a new project, and while sculpting with my boss and colleagues we discussed how we feel when starting a piece of work.  I was quite relieved to hear that my boss felt the same way I do when starting a new sculpt – a little bit afraid.

This mastectmy appliance sculpt was for a TV drama called The Walk. It had to be realistic and subtle, despite being a dramatic effect. (For Neill Gorton/Millennium FX)

I suppose it is that ‘blank canvas’ syndrome.  That is, when until something starts to take real shape, it is perfectly possible that whatever ability you had before had somehow left your brain and now you were just pushing a lump of mud around and hoping for the best.

I thought it worthwhile to share that as I was surprised and happy to hear that my talented boss felt the same way when all that is staring back at you is a blank armature and you are the only thing turning a big bag of mud into something that people want to pay you for!

I also get the same feeling just before I apply a prosthetic to someone for the first time.  Once it is on, and the colour starts working its magic, I breath a silent sigh or relief.  Very often, I apply something only once or twice, but when a makeup requires more applications, I get better each time and the nerves diminish.  It certainly keeps me on my toes.

It is something I point out in workshops I teach, as the feeling is especially acute when there is an audience.   I usually stick a makeup on some poor soul in the wee hours and there is none present but those involved.  In a live class, there is the added pressure of a whole team of expectant eyes awaiting the process to unfold before them.  When I start a demonstration, I like to remind people that they should rejoice at how rough it looks at first before it takes real shape. Theirs is likely to also, but look what happens as you gradually pull it all together.

Foam latex appliances gradually come together as the colours are layered. It never stops being a little bit scary to do! (for David White/Altered States FX)

This is important, because when sculpting anything, it gradually takes shape and the first part is when it looks it’s worst.  If you have never really sculpted anything, you will meet this phase first and it can put you off if you are not encouraged to push through and ‘find’ the shapes.

It is the same with makeup demos – I tell people to rejoice in how crap something looks at first, because this is what they will see when they try.  Gradually, however, it comes together and you acquire the faith to trust in your ability and it soon becomes a process.

You agonise at first with the artistic part, then gradually it becomes a craft and you execute trusted refining and texturing techniques.  I love it – I think few people lose the fear entirely!  Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

-Stuart

One of the most common difficulties faced by those of us who foolishly stick bits of rubber onto faces for fun is matching a persons skin tone realistically.

Whether you are mixing up a colour to paint a big rubber body to look real, blend in an appliance or mixing up a flesh pigment for silicone, making a skin colour up out of primary colours is a tricky thing to master.  I wanted to share something I have used to help me solve the puzzle.

I remember watching The Lost Boys (loved that movie), and seeing Greg Cannoms’ awesome vampire make-ups (using the now commonplace ‘vampire brow’ look) and trying it out on myself, failing miserably to get the colour right. (I got there eventually, but I had not figured out how to get great edges…check out the article I wrote with some of my early attempts).

There were a couple of things that I did not know then but do now which where responsible for this utter failing.

1. Skin is translucent, not opaque like the makeup I was applying.

2. Skin is not a single colour, but a gentle mottle of many colours to a lesser or greater degree.

(3. I was utterly crap at it too, although somehow this did not stop me from continually trying.)

So, when I started using Photoshop, it was a great to find tools which can be used to help take some of the guesswork out of mixing skin tones.  If you have Photoshop – great, you can try this out for yourself.  If not, you can use the examples I have shown below anyway to help your mixing.

Sure, I can tell you to mix up varying quantities of red, yellow and blue with some white (after all, your computer printer does a great job of making skin tones from photos just using just four colours) but how much of what?  You are usually mixing tiny amounts and and can’t easily weight a tiny blob of paint with any accuracy.

Obviously, there are lots of paint and pigment colours depending on the actual medium you are using, but I am concentrating on just using five of them – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black and White.  Any extra colours you can find will speed things up, but are not necessary.

The ‘Color Picker’ tool in Adobe Photoshop (pictured below) appears as a box and basically allows you to select a single pixel within an image and gives a lot of data about that particular colour.

It breaks down the chosen colour using a few different colour scales such as RGB (Red, Green, Blue for monitors etc and ‘#’ which is for web colours).  However, we are interested in physical pigments and so we look at the numbers used in the CMYK scale – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key Black.  Using my knobbly visage as a starting point, lets have a look at how it works.

You can see that the colour I have selected just above my eyebrow has appeared within the colour picker near the top of the range in that square.  It also is shown as a colour swatch in that little rectangle to the right. Following the arrows, you can see it happens to be made up of the following amounts:

Cyan: 11
Magenta: 24
Yellow, 47
Black: 0

So what does this have to do with painting?

Well basically, it spells out the proportions of the different colours used with white in order to create that colour.  If I put these number values through Microsoft Word chart maker (pictured below), I can create a simple bar chart which represents more visually how much of each colour is needed in order to mix that particular skin tone.

Because the proportions of each colour are shown, you can use this guide to mix any quantity of this base colour. Here, there is twice as much magenta as cyan, and twice the amount of yellow as magenta, and no black.

These colours mixed together and added to white should get pretty close to the chosen skin tone so long as you use good quality pigments of the same brand and type.  It won’t be exact but it will certainly take a lot of the guesswork out.  Always add this mixed colour to the white, and not the other way around or else you may end up using gallons of white before you arrive at the correct brightness.

Check out the other examples below and compare the colour proportions used.

What is quite interesting in the images above and below is how similar the chart appears despite clear skin colour differences.  The above colour picked is deliberately a mid range colour from the available shadow and highlights on her face.  Below I have chosen a darker area under the eyes of person with paler skin.

It is important to therefore select an area that fairly represents the skin tone, or take a sample from the highlight and a sample from the shadow in order to determine what a mid-range colour is.  Usually, it is a good idea to mix a skin tone which is slightly paler than required so that it can be shaded with paint or makeup in those required areas.  This way you won’t need to add highlights, as the pale base is the highlight

Got a colour mixing issue?

If you have any questions, comments or if you are having trouble mixing or matching a colour, feel free to email me an image or leave a comment and I will do the above breakdown for you and try and help you out.

-Stuart

I recently did a few effects for a TV show, and one involved a torture scene with skin being cut by a knife with bleeding live on camera.

There was no budget or time to make a series of fake chest sections to be cut with a real knife.  Besides, I was not sure if the shot was tight enough to be able to use a prop section like that or indeed what angle the camera would be.  No…it was going to have to be much more basic than that.

I had an idea about how to do it, and it worked rather well.  I recreated the process and videoed it so you can have a go too if you fancy it.  It’s not for the squeamish, though!

Funny thing was, I actually used a cheaper knife for the actual show, but used a Stanley knife for this tutorial.  As you will see, there were a few problems that I had to overcome in this which I actually did not have to deal with on the real job.

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If you have any questions, comments or actually have a crack at making one yourself, then please do comment below or get in touch!

-Stuart

I believe the single most important aspect of makeup effects is to use reference!

It doesn’t matter what kit, materials or products you use – without basing the work on something real, it just won’t look right. Even the greatest sculptors who seem to work from memory are using a memory fed with reference!

Researching will teach you a lot about what you are trying to create, and reading up on it as well as just viewing images and video will certainly help the information soak in.

This is especially true for casualty makeup and creature design. Although monsters, aliens and creatures are make believe (well, I would argue that they are), their appearance still needs to be initially based on reality to look convincing. There are some crazy looking things in nature, and using them to refer to will help a great deal.

Deep sea animals, insects and images of cells, bacteria and other tiny objects taken with an electron microscope are all great departures from the usual way of looking at and thinking about things and provide a rich source of creative inspiration as well as information.

It often helps to shift a creative slump (or ‘artistic block’) by looking at things and realising they actually appear differently than you had imagined.

What it gives you

• Simply put, reference can make you much better. The thing with drawing and sculpting figurative designs is that you are trying to create a specific look which will generate a response from the viewer. In the case of make up effects it is usually to create fear or disgust (yay!) or to simply look real, as in the case of an age or character makeup.

• Very often, people get stuck into the fun part as sculpting for the sheer joy of it, and although sculpting is a fun activity, it is kind of like driving around in a really nice car with no destination in mind. Although a fun thing to do, there is no actual end point to arrive at. Your creative destination is going to be much better (and you will learn much more) by using reference material of real things.

• Good design – be it drawing, painting, sculpting or digital – is all about seeing and understanding more. Reference is the best way to do that. If you have ever attended life drawing classes then you will know how much better your drawing gets if you have an actual live model to draw from rather than just make it up in your head.

The habit of collecting free reference

Getting into the habit of saving useful magazine or newspaper images is a good way to accumulate images for nothing. Keep them in a folder or scrap book for later when they may be useful.

The internet is a great resource for information, most of it completely free. Using Googles image search option is good, especially if you specify a large image size filter so the pictures you do get will be higher resolution.

Photo sharing sites such as Flickr are great too – someone comes off a skate board and needs ten stitches in their face, what do they do…apparently take a photo to show the world. Take advantage of this generosity and look for images tagged with your search terms.

However, search engines will only present results based on the results of your search term so using the right terminology will get you much better results.

Using correct terminology will help with your reference. Looking stuff up on Wikipedia is a great start as it will lead you to many other relevant options and often corrects you and leads you to more accurate terminology.

Put the phrase ‘bullet hole’ in the search box in Google for example and you get a ton of bullet hole graphics for stickers and the occasional made-up injury from someone’s Halloween party.

However, if you try ‘gunshot wound‘, you will find much more relevant results as this is the kind of terminology used in the medical profession, and as a result the search term will find more relevant material. Try also ‘penetrative injury‘, ‘penetrative trauma‘ etc. You may find variations and different classifications depending on country and whether it is for civilian or military use, so play around with the words and see if that helps.

Word of warning though – as you can imagine these images of real casualty situations and injuries are likely to be quite unpleasant!

Below is a table of examples which you may try
if looking for casualty reference.

Have any reference ideas?

If you have or know of any reference books or sources that you think should be included, please leave a comment below and I will happily add them and credit you for making the blog more useful to all.

-Stuart