11 Levels of Prosthetic Makeup: Easy to Complex

I'm Meg Wilbur, and today I've been challenged

with explaining prosthetic makeup

in 11 levels of increasing complexity.

[spooky electronic music]

Special effects makeup is a really broad umbrella.

There's old age, bald caps, spotty painting, face painting,

all sorts of different things.

I'm defining complexity as flourishes, different textures,

the small minutia details that are often overlooked

or are not easy to replicate.

Level one, temporary tattoo application.

Crafting a demon can be approached

in a lot of different ways.

I have decided to create mine around the idea

of someone going and getting a tattoo

that didn't quite mean what they thought it did,

travels through their bloodstream,

and turns them into a demon.

For this step, we're gonna be using something

called Pros-Aide adhesive.

It's sort of like a liquid bandaid.

It's literally a medical adhesive.

I'm laying down a layer of adhesive

to help the tattoo transfer stick

to the skin just a little bit better.

We are going to put on a layer of Pros-Aide on top of that,

and that's just to seal it into the skin

to really make sure that it's not gonna go anywhere.

That's just another layer of insurance.

And then after we get that layer of Pros-Aide on there,

we're gonna powder it down.

This is gonna help marry it into the skin.

It's also gonna keep the Pros-Aide from being sticky.

And after we get that layer of powder on there,

our final step is to kind of wipe it off,

make sure that it's all matted down, and ready to go.

Level two, multi-brush application.

So for this one, we're going to use a nice red tone

to really express how irritated and angry this tattoo is.

It's starting to get infected,

and the way that we're going to apply it

is using stipple brushes.

Stipple brushes are duo fiber brushes.

You can always identify them.

They have a short section of bristles

and a long section of bristles.

So I like stipple brushes for this in particular,

because they give a almost pointillistic,

just gives you something nice and soft

that you can continue to work with.

So in this level,

we are introducing the use of alcohol paint,

and the reason that I like alcohol paint the most

is because you can use it like a watercolor

It builds up in washes, and it looks really subtle.

If you think about skin as an organ,

it's layered on top of other things,

and alcohol paint has the translucency

to mimic actual things that happen on your skin

without looking as opaque and stagey

as a cream makeup might.

Level three, veining.

We're at the part of the story

where the infection is starting to enter the bloodstream.

So, the brush that I'm gonna be mainly using for this

is a very, very fine point brush.

It's a 6-10.

In order to get the effect of really cool veining,

which is just to show the actual veins

that are capillaries of your arm,

we are going to be using our stippling technique.

It leaves behind these little points every so often,

and I like to use them as the groundwork

for creating really cool veins.

The cool thing about alcohol paint

is that because it is applied in washes

and it is so translucent,

you don't have to be committed to anything.

And because we've stippled paint on

and there are voids in areas where there's not as much paint

or there's no paint at all,

you can get away with doing things like that.

If you oversaturate the skin with alcohol

and attempt to touch paint onto it, it'll bleed.

It'll balloon or blossom.

And another thing to look out for

is you can't use a ton of pressure and drag it across

with multiple colors.

You'll start to pick up the layers underneath.

It is very easily reactivated.

Level four, creating dimension.

So so far, all of our techniques

have been two-dimensional techniques.

For this level, we are adding an additional third dimension

to things, so we can pop out some blisters

and really add to our look by giving it a little hype.

For this level,

we're gonna be using a two-part silicone complex.

They stay totally uncured when they're separate.

When you mix them together,

they cure into little silicone pieces,

and they can go right on the skin.

It's a platinum-based silicone,

and I'm gonna add a catalyst to it

to just make it cure just a little bit faster.

That way we can make sure that our little dots

that we put on the skin stay raised dots.

After we get those dots on the skin

in the areas that we want them,

we're going to add a little bit of alcohol paint

on top of them just to give them a little extra pop

to really show that they are pussy and infected.

I'm gonna be using a filbert brush to go in

and around these little blisters that we've created

to give them a little more dimension.

And I'm going to use a flat-ended brush

to add the yellow color to the blisters.

I am using yellow, because yellow puss,

and I'm going to be using a little more

of that angry red color around the base of those pustules,

so that I can really pop them out

and make sure that they read well.

Next level, I'll be increasing complexity

introducing texture to our look.

Level five, creating texture.

We will be using something called Egyptian Magic.

Egyptian Magic is something that you can use

to add a glossy sheen to your pieces.

Many industry professionals use KY jelly

for almost everything.

And for this, we don't really need it to be goopy or gooey.

We just want it to be very slick and wet-looking.

So I tend to gravitate towards the Egyptian Magic,

because it's easy to apply.

It's shiny without being too shiny.

It's not too wet.

It's not too runny.

You can control it pretty well,

and it really makes things look quite good.

So the way in which we're increasing complexity

is by increasing our visual language.

In order to do that,

we are adding different levels of texture,

different pieces to really make it come together.

If you wanted to make something goopy or gooey

like think about Neo coming out of that pod

for the first time in The Matrix,

that's a substance called methylcellulose,

which is a plant-based food thickener,

totally consumable, totally flavorless,

but it is actually something that you would buy

as a powdered substance and then boil on the stove.

I know, because I've done it

Level six, prosthetic application.

So story-wise, our model is now going fully

off the deep end and becoming a full-on demon.

For the sake of the schedule of our episode,

we've gone ahead

and acquired a pre-made demon face appliance.

In a larger production,

I would prefer to craft my own demon face

to control as much of the creature's design

as I possibly can.

And in order to achieve this look,

we are going to be applying a full face

facial prosthetic appliance, as well as two ear appliances,

one to each ear, and then two sets of horns.

I've asked our model to go ahead

and insert his own contact lenses

prior to our facial transformation

as a safety precaution.

For this level,

I'm gonna have my friend Brittany Turpen help me.

She is going to assist me through the application process,

and in order to make our application

as easy and seamless as possible,

our first step is going to be to prep the skin.

We're gonna use another round of that toner.

This time, we are also going to apply something

known as Skin Saver.

It's a lotion that you put on that acts as a barrier cream.

Your skin on your face is very thin,

much thinner than the skin on your arms

or the skin on your legs.

So we wanna treat it with a little bit more TLC.

Removing a full facial appliance at the end of the day

can be quite a task, and we want to make sure

that he walks away feeling as fresh as a spring chicken.

Our second step is going to be

gluing down our model's eyebrows, which might seem crazy,

but we will be using a silicone-based adhesive

known as Telesis.

The next part of this application

will be holding the facial appliance

up to Andrew and seeing how it fits him.

We're gonna decide on exactly how we want it to be placed,

and then we're gonna take a powder puff

and powder around the edges of it,

so that we know exactly where we want it to lay,

so that when we go to actually glue everything down,

we know exactly how it lines up on his face.

Since we are using generic prosthetics for this,

it is kind of impossible to say

if things will fit him perfectly until we see it near him,

and it's very likely that they won't fit like a glove.

It's very common for there to be minor fit issues,

especially if you don't get a makeup test.

There's a variety of ways that you can handle that.

Sometimes we use things called blenders.

They're little patches of very thin foam latex

that you can just apply to bad, saggy, crazy edges

[chuckles] to make sure that people can't see them.

For this application,

we're going to be using the same silicone glue

that we use to glue down our model's brows

instead of the Pros-Aide that we used for the tattoo.

There is something that goes with it called thinner,

which just kind of thins out the consistency

of that very thick silicone-based glue,

and sometimes instead you can use that thinner

to lift an edge that got pushed down too quickly.

It adds so much more flexibility to your application.

Whereas with Pros-Aid, once it's down, it's down.

That's it, that's all you got, good luck.

For our next level, we'll be increasing complexity

by painting and sealing with pax paint,

which will seal the foam

and also help us start to match our model's skin tone.

Level seven, stippling with pax.

So in this level, we are going to be using something

called pax paint, which is a mixture of Pros-Aide adhesive

and acrylic paint.

The reason that we're going to be using that next

is because we must seal the foam completely

before we can move on to using any of our airbrush

or alcohol colors, because foam is really porous,

and it will absorb anything that's super wet

if you don't seal it first.

So the acrylic and Pros-Aide mixture creates a film,

a plastic film over it that is totally skin-safe.

Acrylic paint is very flexible.

So this mixture of it and the adhesive actually flexes

with you, so you'll still be able to move all around

without it cracking off like you would think

that house paint would, but it also seals it,

so that we can then in our next steps

use our favorite paints to really make things come to life.

In level two, we used alcohol paint

and brushes to do stippling.

In this level, we're going to be using

non-latex white sponge

to create a very similar type of texture,

but we're using sponge, because the pax paint

can easily ruin your brushes,

and those brushes are quite expensive.

So we wanna make sure we take very good care of them.

In order to create that texture with the sponge,

what I do ahead of time is I will take the sponge

and rip it up and then use that

to create this dimensional texture with our pax paint.

The worst mistake you can make

with pax paint is to use way too much of it.

It is a nightmare to remove.

There are instances in which we'll use pax paint

like on hands or for movies where it's a totally blue guy

and you have to do what you have to do,

but it's not preferential to use pax paint anywhere

except for where you absolutely need it.

Level eight, spattering.

While it may seem

like applying the prosthetics is actually more difficult

than what our next step is going to be,

it's something that has to be done

before we can achieve our next level.

I'm going to be using one of my favorite airbrush guns

to help elevate our look of actual skin texture

and actual skin color.

So we will be really trying to nail down that skin tone

and nail down the look of our skin.

We don't really wanna touch it

after this level to adjust the skin.

We're just gonna move on

to other parts of painting after this.

I like to use the spattering gun

to start things off at least.

There are plenty of other spatter.

You can use a a chip brush that you cut off the top.

I like to start with my airbrush,

because it's the most uniform spray

whereas when you're doing something by hand,

it is dependent upon how you are flicking it,

how it's feeling.

Because I'm also trying to nail a color,

I want to make sure that my color is uniform

before I start adding in more unique touches.

The reason that I am going to use the chip brush

near the eye area

is because we want to blend down those edges,

but I know that I'm going to be doing a different

than flesh paint scheme in the eye area ultimately.

So I'm not quite as concerned with the uniformity of that

in the eye area, and I'm going to be using my airbrush gun

for the overall effect on the rest of the prosthetic.

The types of paints that we're gonna be using for this,

not just skin tone paints,

but we are also going to be using color adjusters as well.

Color adjusters that you might come across

even in the makeup store when you go,

you get your corals, you get your rose adjusters,

you've got olive adjuster.

I'm a big fan of adjusters.

I love them.

I feel like they are the easiest way

to make things really start to look real.

You can get caught up in the minutia

of using a bunch of different skin tones,

but at the end of the day,

once you've gotten in the realm of your skin tone,

it will be really be up to the adjusters

to come in and save the day for you.

If your paint is super thin,

you're gonna wind up doing about 7,000 passes

with your airbrush gun

before you finally start to see something happening,

but you don't want your paint to be too pigmented as well,

because then you're just gonna see like freckles everywhere,

just a million freckles of everything,

and that gets to be very overwhelming.

It's a push and pull of, okay,

for this pass, I think I'm gonna do super translucent.

Then maybe the next pass with a different color,

I'm gonna get a little bit bolder with it.

I'm gonna back off with the translucency.

You really learn those things through trial and error.

I try to start pretty loosey goosey with it,

and then once I start feeling like,

okay, we've got our skin tone nailed down,

I'm gonna start adding my freckle tone.

I'm gonna add my dark freckle tone.

I just like to make sure

that I give myself a little bit of wiggle room,

so I'm not like committed to a barrage of dots off the bat.

In our next level, we're going to be increasing complexity

by starting to really hone in on our character.

We're going to be using techniques known as modeling

and patterning to breathe a new life into this character

now that we have already nailed down the fleshiness

and the skin tone of it

and just start to really make our character sing.

Level nine, modeling and patterning.

Modeling is a term that refers to what happens with blood

in the skin of dead bodies,

and it is this very dappled blood pooling that happens.

It is something that we use as a technique

of paint application in the special effects world,

not just when we're simulating zombies or dead bodies,

but also that term has come to transcend

just that application and start to refer

to the look of breaking up the skin

in a way where the paint ebbs and flows

where you get some areas that have this definition

and other areas that don't have it quite as much,

and it's a very gorgeous technique.

Patterning, think of it like a snake.

It's like the actual pattern

of how the paint is going to go on

or how your look is going to wind up.

I am going to achieve our modeling and patterning

through use of a more precise airbrush gun.

This is going to be a smaller spray pattern

and a smaller airbrush gun in general.

And I am going to use modeling techniques.

Some people refer to it as like your crazy eights

or your your eight patterns, my favorite,

and it's one of the easiest to fly through,

but it is really just a way of applying paint

in a non-uniform uniform way to break up the skin.

And I will pattern over that with the same airbrush gun

in a very similar manner to how we did our veining.

I'm gonna follow the lead of my modeling

and see how it turns out and where it goes.

And then I'm gonna go in there and I like to dot

with my patterning, so we're gonna do that.

This is the level and the step in this application

where you can really let your artistry come

to the forefront of things.

In the previous levels, in the previous steps,

we've been just focused on trying to create as much realism

as possible, and this is where fantasy starts to take over.

This is where your ideas and and your beliefs

about how you want your character to turn out,

that's where this can come to the party

and take the lead.

Level 10, dry brushing and marrying.

In level 10, we're increasing our complexity

by using the techniques of dry brushing in particular

and also the idea of marrying all of our things together.

We will be using these to just solidify what we've done

in the previous levels and make sure

that everything comes together to create one very uniform

and very put together piece.

Previously to this, we have ignored the eye orbit a bit,

and we are going to be using cream makeup

to really bring our paint job down into the eye orbit.

We're gonna use a little bit of eyeliner in the eye

to marry our effects paint job and our actual areas

that I wouldn't wanna use alcohol paint, for instance.

I'm not gonna use alcohol pain on somebody's eyelid.

That's a little mean.

I am going to use beauty makeup

in a non-conventional beauty way to bring some more life

into this and to really keep things

in the realm that I wanna keep them in,

which is to move away from human and to move into fantasy.

And I'm going to be using a technique known as dry brushing.

Previous to this,

we've been using wet application techniques

where the paint is very wet as we apply it.

In this in particular with the horns,

we're gonna use a dry brushing technique,

which is where you try to get as much of the water,

whatever you used to activate with off the brush

and keep the pigment on it,

and then brush that onto the horns

to enhance the texture of it,

and then leave some of that paint

that was already on the horn in the areas that you want it.

So really what this does is it adds pigment

to the raised parts of the piece

and leaves what you already had

into the crevices and recesses of it.

Level 11, final reveal.

For the final level,

I am taking a dental impression from my model,

and I am going to create a custom set of dentures for him,

so that we can add something special to this

that is not purchasable in stores

like every other piece that we have done previously.

I'll also be adding nails to the look

and a little bit more flare, a little demon blood,

a little sass there.

And these elements are often overlooked,

but so important to helping tell a story.

They really change the entirety of the makeup.

They really help sell it a little bit more.

And I find them to be

some of the most fascinating parts of makeups.

I mean, think about all those scary things that you've seen

with like creepy teeth all over them.

So like, yeah, we're gonna add a little creepy teeth

to this guy.

[spooky electronic music]

Thanks so much for watching.

I hope you guys learned something new

about prosthetic makeup that you didn't know before,

and hopefully I've piqued your interest enough

to help you win the Halloween costume contest this year

at your job.

Good luck.