Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/933762
THE ARTISAN WINTER 2018 • 55 Whenever possible, I like to use a minimum of pieces to achieve a look, to retain as much of the actor as possible, so I made sides of the jaw pieces, a chin piece, an eyelid piece, two different versions of a nose, a forehead and a dental plumper. These were made at my studio Creative Character Engineering, by myself and my crew which con- sisted of Lesley Becerra and Sven Granlund. We generated epoxy-faced molds, in which we ran Super Baldies encapsu- lated Platsil Gel 10 in a mauve hue. With Nana on Skype from the UK, we did a test of each piece sequentially, and settled upon using all of the pieces except the brow. The plumper was also not used as the sides of the face piece were sufficient. It was a tricky make-up in that James has very smooth skin, and I chose to keep the pieces to a minimum size, which left us with blending edges in very obvious places, running across the middle of his face. Fortunately, our edges were very good, and we had very few days where there were any issues. James was very accommodating to the entire process. The coloration was mostly alcohol-activated colors of different brands, spattered on in very sheer lay- ers. I wound up resculpting the chin and the nose early in production because I wasn't entirely happy with how it behaved on his face. We also decided to begin running the pieces in two different intrinsic tones based on where they were on the face. The eyelid appliance was a Pros-Aid transfer appliance. We ordered blue corneal contact lenses from 9mm SFX with the initial fitting done at Professional Visioncare. 9mm did an extremely good job painting the lenses, con- sidering they did not see James in person. This was such a low-budget production, I also handled the contact lens duties in the morning. Since James was also directing the film, it made for some long and difficult days. We began with Nana wrapping James' hair down while I began to apply the pieces. Nana would blend James' hair front into the wig and match the color. When she was done, she would join me on the col- oration. There were a few days that I was unavailable, so I asked Thom Floutz to fill in for me. Thom is an excellent colorist, and I asked him to give his thoughts on the color sequence I had worked out. He agreed and added a nice mushroom undertone that we kept throughout the shoot. Nana did an incredible job of also maintaining the make- up for up to 17 hours and I am incredibly proud of all of our efforts on this labor of love. • Whenever possible, I like to use a minimum of pieces to achieve a look, to retain as much of the actor as possible. " "