If you are currently practicing SFX make-up whether that be for your studies, a personal hobby or you simply would like to impress your friends at Halloween, creating a Zombie effect is something very manageable and customisable. There are no strict rules for, essentially, making a mess. Projects like these are good for beginners or when you just want to use up the scraps left in the bottom of your SFX box.
So, you will need:
- Liquid Latex / Body Wax or Clay
- Red, Blue, Yellow, Black and White Body Paint
- A small, blunt applicator for your latex that you don't mind ruining (I use cotton buds and simply remove the cotton)
- Three or more sponges / make-up wedges with small holes picked out of the surface
- Dark eyeshadows of your choice
- A fine brush for final detail
As you can see its a fairly minimalistic project, all you need to remember is: Less is more, you can always add but you can't take away, the more textures you can get into your sponges, the more detail you can put into your piece and PATIENCE IS KEY! You don't want to be smudging all of your hard work.
I encourage you to do a patch test on yourself or whoever you're working on incase of irritation or allergic reaction.
The Method
Step one:
First of all you want to cover the arm or the area you're working on in your white body paint using the sponges or any brush of your choice. Don't worry about the neatness, or being able to see your sponge or brush strokes, this layer just creates a base for the rest of our paints, takes the pinkness out of our skin and allows the body paint that is being applied over it to have a more intense pigment.
Step two:
Once your base layer has dried, you want to take your sponges and starting with yellow, cover the area in a light, stippling motion to capture the texture of your sponge creating a naturally, bruised and damaged effect. You then want to repeat this using the red. Although you want a light effect, make sure not to dilate your paints too much if using water-based body paint due to dripping and smudging of previous layers.
Step Three:
Now once all of that is dry, we can begin to use our Latex. As we are using the Latex for our wounds and boils etc, there is really no guide to follow. Feel free to be original and make it your own, but try not to go over the top or else the detail for surrounding areas will be lost. I tend to stick to the rule of one main wound and then incorporate the rest of the area with smaller abrasions and boils. This also allows me to concentrate my paint more around the main wound which then feeds into the surrounding tissue, this ties in with the rest of the piece.
If your Latex is quite tacky like mine, a useful tip is to have a little bit of water on hand to dip your applicator or finger into, this just helps with moulding your wounds and allows more control.
Step Four:
After your Latex is completely dry, you then want to redo the second step but with more concentration in your paints. Again you want to start with your yellow and just stipple the entire area, repeat with red. You then need to mix some red and black together to create an old, dried blood effect and apply that where you feel necessary. I simply use the lid of my paints when I mix colours and then just wash them out when I finish. I applied the darker red more towards the bigger wound and the fingers which adds to the decay.
Step Five:
Now using your fine brush, you can begin adding detail. I use the same colour routine as I do when I'm creating layers with the sponge, but with the brush I go over the latex. So starting with yellow, move onto your reds just cover all of your latex until you're satisfied with the appearance. I feel you get the best results when your paints are quite concentrated. I also like to blend them out a little bit to help them blend in and show how the wound/boil is lifted.
You can start working into the rest of your hand now as well, I like to use the darker red to shape my knuckles and the natural wrinkles on my fingers to make them look worn. I also worked into the my hand by using my finger to drag the dark red paint and create a lifeless, bruised effect on the skin.
Step Six:
Using the same fine brush you can now start working with the black body paint. To add to the decayed theme, I like to paint the tips of my fingers and then use my fingers to smudge and drag the black up my fingers. How far you take it is up to you but I usually just take it about 1cm above my nail. I also lined my nail beds in black and smudged that until it was all nicely blended and I was happy with the effect.
With the excess black on your finger, you may also want to do some slight, shading on the rest of your hand, for example to define the bones in your wrist or knuckles etc.
Step Seven:
Continuing to use the black paint you want to go back to your paint brush and just top each of your boils slightly with the black paint to make them look old. If you have any open wounds you also want to add some black around the bottom to show depth and then taking the dark red just fill in the rest of the wound making sure to blend the colours.
Step Eight:
Now using the blue paint, you want to add some more bruising with the sponge technique. If your blue isn't to the shade you would like, you could always mix it with some black to give it more depth. You want to be careful with the blue and what colours you use it on as it changes very easily on lighter and darker bases. I focused my blue on the dark colours such as the main wound and very lightly on the hand and finger area.
Step Nine:
Finally, you want to add some dark shadow to take the shine off your paints and set them basically. I used a dark shade of purple and just lightly brushed it over where I felt it needed to be.
And that is it! All together it took me around two hours to complete but as it is a non-stop process, really, it doesn't feel very long at all.
I hope I was able to answer your questions and help anyone who wants to try this out for themselves, all comments and suggestions are welcome below!
Thanks!
