Gory zombie look 1

Earlier this year I had the pleasure of earning a place in the volunteer cast in the Generation of Z live theater show (Whitechapel) and working there greatly inspired me as a make-up artist, as I was able to work closely with a ever changing cast of professional make-up artists and make-up artist in training, and from them I was able to watch them transform other actors (me included) into flesh eating zombies. I was able to learn many different techniques from watching the make-up artists at work such as colour correction using a colour wheel, how to create more three dimensional wounds using shading and latex or how to create food grade blood using a mixture of golden syrup and different food colourings.

Working at the Generation of Z really inspired me to become more fascinated in gorey special effects make-up as I was constantly surrounded by a cast of extremely talented special effects make-up artists, this paired with my added love of all things zombies including the hit TV show 'The Walking Dead' and 'In The Flesh' and popular video games such as 'The Last Of Us' and 'Left For Dead' offered me a huge range of inspiration for creating a zombie make-up look.

For this look I wanted to for a newly infected zombie, So I focus on making my character look like she had been rotting but not for too long as I wanted to create rather fresh looking wounds.

 

Process

Firstly I mixed together white, green and grey face paint with a little bit of my regular foundation so I could create a pale foundation colour that cancelled out the redness in the centre of my face because I wanted to create a sick un oxygenated look to my skin but at the same time I didn’t want to appear too white or else it would just look unrealistic. I blended this make-up with a dense foundation brush using a mixture of stroking and stippling motions, focusing most of the product on the centre of my face as that is where I have the most redness.

I then started to hollow out my eye sockets by applying a muted purple eyeshadow with a fluffy brush, I also extended this colour under my eyes to give my eyes a more tired look.

Using the same muted purple eyeshadow I contoured my face to give my face a more hollow gaunt appearance, almost like I had lost a lot of weight recently as most zombies look quite gaunt and sickly.

Then using the same colour I applied more colour around my eyes to further hollow them out.

Using a slightly darker colour I contoured my collar bones and neck to further the gaunt appearance, almost like I had lost a lot of weight recently (because you know zombies don't have the best diets in the world).

Using a ripped sponge (to give a rougher texture) I applied liquid latex to the area where I wanted the facial wound to be.

Then I layered thin tissue on top of the wet latex and ripped it down to size and had a more realistic jagged appearance.

I repeated theses steps until I was satisfied with the thickness of the ‘wound’ and then went onto repeat the steps on my neck to create another wound, where I wanted the initial 'bite' to be whilst my facial wound was drying.

 

Done