No kidding, this is what life was like as a makeup artist! It was drawn up by Anthony Fredrickson… the same Anthony Fredrickson from the Trek art department. He was our lab manager.
My makeup days are well behind me now, but I often miss working with my buddy John Caglione! We had some incredible adventures and gigantic laughs! (Below) That’s me tacking the lace down on Ted Danson’s wig from “Three Men and a Little Lady. John did an amazing sculpt on this. One of my favorites.
(Bottom left) As you can imagine, Halloween around us was wild. That’s me and John about to take undue advantage at a local Halloween costume contest. (Bottom right) Final touches.
That makeup timeline is too funny Doug. And I love the makeup on you and John, yours’ especially looks like an uber-mutated version of your good-self!
Kind of how you may look after a bender on Romulan Ale! Or after a visit to crush-and-puff World.
Mark
Doug you look like one of those stretch-y faced guys from ST: Insurrection!
That’s so cool. I always liked the make-up done by you and Mr. Caglione. Didn’t he do the make-up on C.H.U.D.? I think my favorite piece of work the two of you did was the Pee Wee Demon for My Demon Lover. The first time I saw your name on Star Trek I wondered if it was you or not. I eventually found out when I saw I picture of you doing some make-up on the show. I hope we get to see more.
I remember CHUD well. I was there with John. CHUD is now considered a cult classic. I remember Homer Simpson afraid to go to NYC because of the CHUDs. Somewhere on line there is a picture of John and I doing life casts of the actors who would be CHUDs. The Pee Wee Demon was a good one. They accidentally lit him on fire one night. Man, I’ve got some stories!
I may have asked these questions in a different thread so please forgive any repetition.
1. Do you still dabble in make up just for some fun eg. for Halloween?
2. On the credits of “Dark Knight” is says Heath Ledger’s make up was done by John Caglione Jr. Is it the same man you’re talking about. If so, please tell him I think he did an awesome job!
Hi Barrie,
1) Rarely do any makeup anymore, mostly because I’m way too busy. If I had spare time, I probably would.
2) Yes, thank you. John did Ledger’s Joker makeup. In my opinion it should have won the Oscar that year.
Oh wow I never noticed the credit, nice job indeed
Having such a perspective of the make-up and VFX fields, I wonder about your thoughts on virtual make-up such as Lola’s (X-Men 2, Benjamin Button, etc.). Have you and your pals ever had the opportunity to give such approach a try or do some mix of real make-up and digital enhancement, or is it still prohibitive on a TV budget?
http://www.lolavfx.com/
Hi Snafu! I think virtual makeup will eventually replace VFX makeup entirely. Corrective and general aging will always be done by a makeup artist on actors IMO. We’ve done virtual stunt characters and we’ve fixed makeups virtually.. for instance on BSG when Madame President was doing chemo and lost her hair, the makeup dept did a bald cap on her. The trouble was that she had so much hair, that her head looked like a light bulb. We had to go in and do a head reduction on her frame by frame. For now, that’s about it for virtual makeup. Big virtual makeups are still pretty much the domain of big budgets.
How fast do you see the cost curve coming down on these things? Could it be similar to CGI modeling, where you were able to go from the Borg battle in First Contact to the big setpiece sequences on DS9 and Voyager in the space of a few short years?
Also, yes more makeup articles please!!
Hi Ian, No, I don’t think it will be similar to CGI hard dynamic modeling. the number of people who understand faces is much smaller than the kind of artist who can build spaceships. Faces, and what makes them work, is much more complex than flying a spaceship or building a city. That’s going to take quite a bit more time.
The highest compliment I can pay – I had no idea there was any CG on Mary McDonnell in those scenes. None. And I was paying attention.
Hmm… you’re kind of teaching somebody to be a plastic surgeon with a computer mouse, so I can see how that might take a substantial amount of training. Still, it seems like something within reach of somebody really committed, and I can’t help but think that if you put the computing power into peoples’ hands, they’ll figure out some way to use it. That’s getting cheaper and more sophisticated all the time.
“Your only call is to do the”
…?
Edit something out?
JNG – Don’t remember why that is blank!
JNG, my question as well. Since I hadn’t seen anyone else ask before you, I thought I was out of the loop or something.
Man, those Halloween costumes are outrageous! Those monster hands are great; did he actually wear them very long?
Hi Dea! We wore the makeup to dawns early bright!
That timeline is hilarious! I bet Halloween was a hoot with you guys! Those costumes look like a lot of fun.
“Your stuff edited down to only 17 frames” seems like a truism in any special effect discipline be it makeup or shots of starships.
“Wife is pregnant”
Hahahaha. Too funny.
Hi there,
Greetings from Brazil, Doug!
To cut a long story short, I used to work with makeup FX years ago (before I´ve started working with 3d animation), and I always was a big fan of yours and John Caglione´s work . I was one avid reader of your articles at Gorezone, etc (actually, still have some plasticine-and-plaster covered issues of those around my office somewhere) .
Learned a lot just studying your making-of photos at the time, thanks a lot for all that.
Well , just would like to say it´s great to know you guys are still producing wonders , and that reading your stories here in the blog is an inspiring experience per itself (you should write a book about your experiences , that´s for sure).
Have a great time, and keep living the dream!
Alê!
Thank you so much for the wonderful note. It means a lot to hear that those articles, like messages in a bottle, reached you and meant so much! I was always most excited to write the how-to articles because I knew you were out there! I remember that Gorezone and I were a little bit at odds because I didn’t have any blood in them! Eventually they put me on the black and white pages, and saved the color for the gory stuff! Heh heh… who can blame them… afterall, the magazine was called “Gorezone”!
Best wishes! Love to visit Brazil one of these days!
Doug
Hey Doug, where’s your Oscar? I imagine it should be somewhere near the top of the graph…
Hi there Doug!
You and Cag were one of my big inspirations for moving to Cali many years ago. I’ve always been a big Dick Smith fan, and greatly enjoyed your Gorezone articles. That was the only reason I bought that mag, as I was much more a fan of character and interesting make-ups than gore.
Any chance you can post some of the old articles here? I especially enjoyed the “shop tour” article. The planning loft was priceless.
Thanks for the great blog and please, more make-up/Dick Smith/Cag n Drex tales!!
Dave