The Character & Special FX final and photo shoot day is something that dreams are made of! Let me describe. Imagine a room full of creatures and humanoids from different worlds; a swamp witch, a demon warrior, a pirate, an evil queen, a fantastical faun, Kappa the Japanese anime toad, and an array of other incredible transformations. This was The Art of Makeup School last December.

Students began to arrive early in the morning to set up their stations and begin their hair and costume pieces. Within the hour more students and their models began to trickle in and you could feel the nervous electricity in the air. Twelve incredibly talented and dedicated students had been working feverishly in the final weeks leading to the photo shoot; all working on various things like running foam, hand tying mustaches, building costume armor and pre-painting their prosthetic pieces. If you saw all the pieces they had been working on, you’d assume they’d all been working at it for months and not the astounding seven weeks they were given to accomplish such tall feats. In those seven weeks they had learned practical application techniques with film industry standards for working on a professional film set. They had the opportunity to work in our professional effects lab with specialty products and seemingly magical ingredients that would help them create their final vision.

As students finished up their final looks by early afternoon, photographer Jeff Mawer arrived and set up in our photography studio while his assistant Luke Olsen began to shoot Behind the Scenes photography. Videographer and The Art of Makeup alumni Heather Ashford also began to document the day. Needless to say, the room was clamoring with excitement.  One by one, students began to get their models into wardrobe and into the photo studio as the photographer adjusted the lighting. The photo shoot began!

The Art of Makeup School is the only school in the entire Pacific Northwest to offer this type of specialized in depth character makeup transformation! Therefore, only a small percentage of makeup artists’ in this region are trained with the skills The Art of Makeup offers.  The majority of this kind of education and knowledge still heavily resides in Hollywood, CA, which is a very expensive place to reside and attend school. Locals feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to learn these skills so close to home.

For most of the students, it was their first time creating a complex character makeup completely from scratch. It was their first time sketching their concepts, lifecasting, sculpting, and applying and painting prosthetics. We feel so lucky to inspire students to be creative, to give them the tools to manifest their dreams and share our love of makeup!

Photographer Luke Olson also wrote a blog on this fun Character & Special FX day with behind the scenes images.  Read his version of our incredible day!