The wonderful...Multiple Year

So... for the past few weeks my year and 3rd year have been gelling and bonding in a group task that the tutors enjoy throwing us into. Think of it as throwing an alpha lion into a group of alpha lions... yeah it gets a bit...tense.
Basically we all have to work as a team to create a 'Character Squad'. We come up with the personality of the characters, how they dress and their motive.
We came up with an post apocalyptic squad in which we had a Soldier, 2 Adventurers and a Heavy Character.
We had numerous meetings to discuss their appearance, features and outfits. I landed some make-up bits and bobs to do. I decided to give the Soldier a past by giving him a chemical burn on his face somewhere. Eventually I decided to do it on his neck which turned out to be a complete pain in the arse. My model who I've moulded this to has really thick stubble on his neck which always proved to be all ache when applying the piece, but it still worked. The chemical burn was really difficult to sculpt. I was tempted to add texture to make the piece look realistic, but scars are simply just smooth skin.
These are the pieces I sculpted and applied on our shoot day...

A few of the shots above were a couple of poses we got off the models before we but them on greenscreen. This was just our shoot day so my makeup didn't get much 'airtime'

I will upload our finished work in the next few weeks, especially after the vfx'ers have had their hand on it. It will look awesome.

Bethan

2 Week Course with Dave Bonneywell

I want to dedicate my first blog post to a 2 week Intense course I did with a rather well credited artists named Dave Bonneywell. If you google him all sorts of weird creatures will come up. But his biggest movies include the likes of Clash of The Titans, Hell Boy 2, 28 Weeks Later and The Seed Of Chucky. He is also a regular artist on The Doctor Who Series.

He came to The University of Bolton on behalf of Neil Gorton's studio, Millennium FX. We did a 2 week intense 'Advanced 3D Physical Processes' course with him. This would involve us sketching out ideas, making our casts of our models, sculpting upon these, creating our negatives then whala! our Prosthetics.

The theme we were given was 'Mutation' which I liked because mutation can literally mean... anything really? I had a few ideas in mind such as a Zombie, Fish, Demonic Possession...but I went all weird and thought I'd give my model 3 eyes. I think I chose this project because it was small yet challenging. I wanted the opportunity to study human anatomy and trying out textures when it came to sculpting. I'd not had the opportunity to do many sculpts before. The biggest sculpt I did was my final project in my first year (The Leech Mouthed Alien Warrior). Other than that I'd only done small sculpts upon boards. So overall... I was Excited. Bare in mind I had just transferred from another University which was lets just say... not for me. So I was excited to begin a new experience in a huge studio filled with really talented people!

2 weeks went by. And we learnt two things:

1. Mr Bonneywell has one of the most 'colourful' vocabularies I have ever come across, which is either because he really loves the word 'Fuck' or it's just a really good way to keep our attention...either way he is an awesome guy!




2. We were now capable of making a mould and a prosthetic the professional way.

This was my finished sculpt of the Triclops Eye. I used a resin eye to keep the shape and I sculpted upon a Rencast facecast. One thing I really enjoyed about our course with Dave was how he taught us texturing! It literally brought all of our pieces to life.

I ran my mould a few times until I got a piece I happy with. Overall I was really happy with my Triclops eye. I thought it looked pretty realistic for my first attempt at anatomy if I must say so myself!

So this was my finished piece. I wasn't 100% happy with my edges but I managed to blend them in a bit more by dappling skin illustrator and using a brush to flick it on. I find this creates an even skin colour and helps adjust the tones.

Overall I found the two weeks with Dave super beneficial! It's worth giving him a google or a Facebook as his ZBrush and sculpting work is awesome!!

Thanks for reading!

Bethan

The Return...

I've not always been someone to commit to things, for example... a blog. I make the same excuses time after time. From not having the time, nothing to blog about or it's pointless when really it's just because I'm completely lazy. When I think about it I come across new make-up experiences daily. I have this little thing where I have to have a different makeup style everyday. I never want my makeup to look the same. Sometimes, when I'm at work (I work for Dune London) I get customers talking to me more about my makeup than we do shoe! Which kind of tells me that maybe sharing my stuff would be useful after all?

Anyway, the reason I have kick started this blog again, truthfully, is because for one of my modules at Uni I have to show evidence of a blog. So, instead of spending all this time refurbishing my old blog just for a screencast to add to my module... why not carry it on and see how it goes?

I will try my best to post blog updates of every new makeup I try including the products I've used so you can have a go if you wish. I will also post predominantly about the work I'm completing in Uni too. Therefore, there will be a few video uploads, tutorials and pictures. I want to give this blog a good mix of the two sides of Make-Up. I use my makeup as my Artform. I love art and it just so happens that I found painting faces and bodies more intriguing than just painting on paper. For the simple fact you can manipulate the appearance of a person to any way YOU want.

A lot of people don't understand that you can practise Make-Up/SFX without being a 'Qualified Artist'. Look at it as a hobby! I hope my blog encourages people who also love art to take a different approach and try using bare skin as their canvas.

I also hope it inspires people who want to pursue their artistic pathways, but are not quite sure how to go about it and what route to take. I think that sums up enough for my blog 'Return'!

Bethan