FAQ

What is this blog about?

As the title should give a hint, it's an archive of makeup effects. Mostly a visual archive, but also an informative one as well. 

It's been a lot harder to find visual references for especially 'monster' effects in recent years, especially with the surge of shitty wikis and listicles. 

And even a bad film - and quite a few of the films covered here are bad - has talented people working on it. Each article attempts to tell their story in their own words.  

What do you mean by 'makeup effects'?

It's a bit much to get into 'special makeup effects' generally encompasses sculpting, prosthetic appliances, masks, creature suits, puppetry and animatronics. 

'Makeup effects', generally, is a transformative artform; how to turn a person several years older, or with a deformed visage, or into a totally non-human creature.  And when puppetry or suits are in the equation, how to keep the illusion of unreality going even further.

So is this all about makeup?

Prosthetic makeups yes, straight makeups no. By 'straight makeups' it means moreso beauty makeups, wigmaking, 'out of the kit' gelatin or latex makeups, and so on. 

This is not me putting down 'straight makeup' work as it is still hard work, but more about what to cover on the blog as I'm only one person! And there's always exceptions.

Ah, you mean practical effects?

Half true.

This isn't for *every* type of practical effect in a film, as much as I love the art of miniature effects, matte paintings and so on. When it comes to miniatures and stopmotion, I limit myself to focusing on monsters, creatures and robots.

If I wanted to be truly accurate to my aims, the blog would be titled 'Makeup Effects & Monster Costume and Miniatures and Stopmotion and Sculpture Archive', but that's not catchy is it?

So there's no CGI stuff on here?

Yep, with some rare exceptions. I generally don't find CGI interesting.

The few CGI 'creature effects' included in this archive are from early 2000s films, when computer-generated effects required physical maquettes to be sculpted first, and the field still had more of a connection to practical miniature effects.

Is this a monster blog?

Yes and no. The focus originally was on 'monsters', but the scope expanded for a few reasons.

Generally, yes this blog has a focused on 'creature effects', as that is what the bulk of special makeup effects has went to realising.

However, having it be just styled on 'monsters' opens up semantics bullshit on 'what is a monster', something I really can't be arsed with.

Add in that gore makeups, surrealistic transformation makeups, and disfigurement or disabled makeups are included quite often. None of these are 'monsters'. 

With disabled makeups in particular; Christopher Tucker's makeup effects work on The Elephant Man is some of the best in film history, but it would be purely bad taste to have the word 'monster' over an article for a film dramatising a real person's life.

And really, the focus of the blog was always to highlight artist's work, and it's deeply unfair to exclude that based on some pedantic criteria. So a more general approach was preferable. 

Is this a gore effects blog?

Again, yes and no.  

Generally, I'm not going to include every single time a mummified corpse prop was made by applying latex on a prop skeleton, or a throat slashing wound prosthetic was made. 

Elaborate gore makeup effects are included but usually it will be in articles for film or TV shows that already have fantastical makeup effects.

Gore effects, on their own, aren't interesting to talk about. I will happily cover certain slasher films, but don't expect me to write articles on Saw, Final Destination or CSI.

Do you specialise in genres? 

A little bit.

The horror, science-fiction and fantasy genres do indeed get the lion's share of coverage, because that's where most of cinema's creative makeup effects lies in. 

But there are specific arthouse or drama films which were seminal moments in makeup effects, and thus are also included on the archive.

Why do you never recap or give your opinions on a movie or TV show?

Because that isn't what my blog is about.

There's two reasons why someone would be reading an article; either they are already with the film/show it is about, or they aren't.

If they're already familiar, then they don't need a recap. If they aren't familiar and want to know what it's like before watching it, then Letterboxd or Wikipedia are right there.

Similarly articles will not have any individual warnings for specific imagery. This is a mostly horror-focused blog, and all manner of grisly or uncanny imagery are covered. 

Why do you never bring up the lore? Or critique how believable the design is,  as it doesn't make sense!! Or how inaccurate the dinosaurs are!!

I sincerely cannot think of anything more boring and useless than quibbling about the 'lore' or 'accuracy' of a work of fiction. This blog is intended to highlight the hard work of artists and craftsmen, not to nitpick or 'rate' designs according to some fanboy criteria.

If you want that crap, I'm sure there's plenty of Youtube channels and Discord servers about such stimulating topics as the speculative evolution of the Teletubbies or whatever.

Why is there no concept art or design drawings in your articles?

To make the articles easier to format, and to ease the workload a little on my end!

Almost every genre production out there has concept art done for it; in some film productions, the concept art reaches to 100s of drawings!

That's too much to put in the average article, let alone thinking how to space it out. I tend to only include photos of the physical props and makeups in action.

But I am thinking of uploading design drawings in their own articles though!  

Where do you get all these images from? 

For the most part, many of them are already publicly available; online promotional photos, screenshots of behind the scenes featurettes, and scans of magazines such as Fangoria, Cinefantastique, Cinefex, Starlog or Gorezone. 

Quite a few others are found from the social media accounts of various makeup artists, and for some cases have been kindly sent to us by the makeup artists personally after contacting them. We are always thankful for their help!

And as a last resort, screenshots from the films or episodes themselves are used too, if there's little or no behind the scenes images that screenshots are the only way to go, but the language of filmmaking often means it's not the best view of a makeup or creature suit!

No ownership is claimed on *any* images on the blog, which is entirely just a hobby project for fun. Or at least scratching an obsessive itch.