Latest zombie makeup test

I've just completed my latest zombie makeup test and I just wanted to share the results...

This is the first proper makeup test I've done with grey facepaint insted of pale foundation, and I'm much happier with the effect.  I'm getting some Mehron grey/green facepaint through the post this week though, so I'm looking forward to seeing how that looks, and hopefully that'll become my go-to skin tone.  This is the first time I've tried out the contact lens as well, and I'm really pleased with that.  Seeing as I need to wear a presciption lens in the other eye I only have the option of wearing a single white-out lens, but I do really like the way it comes off.  This is also my first makeup test with the Grimas tooth enamel, which I'm having a it pf trouble with. It goes on my upper teeth just fine, but for some reason wouldn't go on my lower teeth.  I'll just practice a little more, because again I do like the stuff.  Then the last new addition to the makeup kit was the Mehron stage blood/clotted blood, which I used in the open wounds and to smear around my mouth.  Again I'm very pleased with the colour and consistency, but I was a little too liberal in the mouth smearing, so I'll tone that down next time.

Overall though, the zombification process is coming along nicely.  Once I've got this to a point where I'm completely happy I'll start moving on to more advanced rotten looks.

 

Oh and as for this "top secret" project, it is all set to go ahead.  I still don't know if I'm allowed to mention it yet, so I'm going to continue to keep quiet for the moment.  Hopefully by this time next week I'll have something to report!



Zombie Dent progress

So this Memorailia's cosplay (as I think I've mentioned) combines my love of zombies with my love of Douglas Adams, in the form of a zombified Arthur Dent from Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy.  I know, Arthur never gets zombified or anything even remotely similar, but it's an idea which I know will bring me a lot of joy on the day.  Granted I've been very slow getting started with this, but I'm finally making some progress.  I picked up a towel from Wilkinsons on Sunday afternoon, ordered a dressing gown from Tesco Direct on Sunday evening, and when it was ready to collect from the store today I also picked up some pyjamas.

So this evening I've started zombifying them. I've got five consistencies of fake blood and some black facepaint, so I've just been going to town.  For now I've just been working on the pyjama top and one side of the towel, tomorrow I'll do the other side of the towel and the pyjama bottoms, and then it just leaves the dressing gown.

The pyjama top was a bit more tedious, as I had to make a good, thick blood smear around the neck and tapering away as it headed down the chest; dribbled blood from where zombie Dent had been feeding.  I started off by thickly smearing some cake blood in, and then sloshing on increasingly thinner blood until I'd got a nice effect going.

The towel I had a lot more fun with :)

The first thing I did (as I didn't want this towel to look brand new) was to brush black Snazaroo facepaint over both sides of it.  Snazaroo is supposed to be applied with a moist sponge, but to give it more of a brushed on look I just wiped the towel directly but lightly over the open pot of facepaint.  It was a bit time-consuming, but I was happy with the outcome, after all I'm sure that Arthur must have got himself a little bit grubby before he caught his first victim.

I didn't use the cake blood on the towel either, as I wanted to get more of a cast-off look, so I went straight down to the liquids.  First of all I poured a little bit of runny blood (very much with the consistency of water) onto my hands and flicked it up and down the length of the towel to give a bit of background gore. Then I squeezed a trail of gel blood across the towel, before folding it in half and rubbing it in. Once that was done I repeated the process with the stage blood (very gooey consistency), and the result can be seen above.

I did one more thing after this photo was taken which I was incredibly pleased with. I took a mouthful of the stage blood (which was tricky, given its thickness!), rinsed it around in my mouth for a few seconds, and then coughed/spit it out in places across the towel. This gave a pretty incredible spatter effect, which I'll be using more of when I do the other side tomorrow.

 

I'm still undecided about whether to get slippers or not for this costume.  Obviously it adds to the authenticity, but with me dragging my feet around the hall all day it could end up proving painful.

The pyjama bottoms I'll be doing in a similar fashion to the top, but in addition I'll be tearing it a bit around the ankles.

The dressing gown I'll be going to town on a bit. It seems to be a zombie cliche that us walking corpses end up getting singed, so I'll be taking a blowtorch to my gown (out on the safety of the patio!) to give it a bit of charring.  Then it'll be getting a combination of the pj/towel treatments; cake blood, stage blood, cough/spit spatter, the works.  I will feel a bit of regret at this though, as it's turned out to actually be a really comfortable dressing gown!  I may invest in a second one for just lounging around the house.

 

Then of course the final element is the Guide.  I have one I made for my non-zombie Dent, which I'll be using for this.  I was toying with the idea of making a new Guide which simply said "Panic" on the front (in large, friendly letters), but I don't think I'll have the money to do one this side of Memorabilia.

Oh and I've also invested in zombie contact lenses for the first time since I started my zombie career! I've bought a pair of white ones, so I can put a prescription lens in one eye and a white lens in the other. It'll seem weird, but I should get used to it.  Stay tuned for photos in three weeks!

Undead opportunities...

Well I'm still yet to have any inkling of an official start date at the zombie manor house, but the continued effort of the brilliant folks at wish.co.uk to keep me occupied (and well-fed with brains) is continuing to pay dividends.

There's been something in the pipeline for a few weeks now which I've been waiting for confirmation on, and today I got it.  Now I haven't been told not to discuss/blog about it, but just to be on the safe side I'm going to keep it close to the chest.  So consider this a "watch this space" notification, but hopefully in just under 3 weeks time I'll have something exciting to update you with.

 

In the meantime, keep calm and zombie on...

Fishy Friends: 12 months on

Well this weekend marks 12 months since my little marine aquarium first had life introduced to it.  It's been something of a rollercoaster, mainly hopping between wonder and heartache, but I haven't regretted having it for a moment.  Here's how my tank as a whole is looking today...

The only thing about a full tank shot is that you can't really see any of the critters living in there, so let me give you a lineup.  As of today my tank contains:

• 2 black hermit crabs
• 1 red hermit crab
• 1 stripe-legged hermit crab
• 1 emerald crab
• 1 maroon clownfish
• 1 firefish
• 2 blue/green chromis
• 1 green brittle sea star
• 1 sand-sifiting starfish
• 1 coral banded shrimp
• 1 dancer shrimp
• 3 turbo snails
• 1 sand-sifting snail

And a brand new addition to the tank today:

I'm still trying to find out which species of hermit this is, but I've named him Jim and he's an absolutely magnificent specimen.

So overall the tank's doing well. I've sadly lost 3 fish in the last year and a number of invertebrates, but on the whole everything's thriving.  I'm thinking about getting a Coral Beauty at some point in the next couple of months, but at the moment I'm very happy with the way it's looking on the whole, and am looking forward to another 12 months of marine fun :)





Re: Your Brains - A follow up.

Well it looks like I'm back again!  My laptop was virused in August of last year, and seeing as I was broke I wasn't able to take it into a shop to get fixed.  As time wore on I realised that I was pretty damn happy being unable to spend my evenings dawdling about on the internet, so by the time I actually had the money to sort the problem I decided not to bother.  So I have been computer free for over 6 months and I think it's been a very good experience.

Anyways, I'm obviously up and running again now, so time to update the world on the biggest thing to happen in my life last year.

Remember the zombie audition I went to last June?  If not then my last blog entry before meltdown will explain all.  After several weeks of hearing nothing about it, I eventually gave up hope and carried on about my normal business.  It was something I would have loved to have won, but wasn't really expecting anything to come of it.  Then there was a sudden announcement... "sorry we've taken so long to decide, but we will have chosen a winner by the end of next week!"

Huzzah! There was still hope (if only a fool's hope).

But then next week came and went, and still there was no word.  Once again I shrugged, was thankful for the fun of the audition itself, and went on with my non-zombie life.  My social life took unexpected turns, my job grew stressful, I decided to get a new tattoo in October.  I love my ink, and a new one was long overdue.

And this was where the proverbial ball began to roll...

While on the way to the tattooist my phone rang. It wasn't a number I recognised and I didn't want to be late for my new ink, so I let it go to voicemail.  I went into the studio, sat down, spent a couple of hours under the needle, and headed off to rest my rather sore shoulder.  Once home and relaxing I checked my voicemails.  "Hi Rob, it's Laura from Wish.co.uk..."

That's right. The zombie people. 500 people competed for the role of Britain's Next Top Zombie, and I'm the one who walked away with the title.

HELL.

YEAH.

From there things have stumbled a little, but my zombie life (or unlife) is actually starting to move now.  I still haven't started at the Zombie Manor House in Warrington (which is where the audition was actually for), and a scheduled apppearence on ITV's This Morning on Halloween fell through at the last minute, but a couple of weeks ago I was actually called in for some promo work on the new Nicholas Hoult film Warm Bodies.

So there I am in the blue shirt behind with the gaping head and cheek wounds.  This was a fantastic trip down to London, and my first paid zombie work, which means I am now officially a professional zombie!

Hopefully the Manor House job will start soon as I can't wait to get started, but in the meantime the lovely people at Wish are trying to find things to keep me occupied.

Well that's my big update.  I am Britain's Next Top Zombie, and I'm loving the lifestyle that comes with it.

Re: Your brains. An explanation

You may recall a couple of weeks ago I posted a very brief blog entry about being a zombie. And then I went to the pub.  Well it's explanation time.

Wish.co.uk (whose logo you can see splattered behind me) run a zombie apocalypse survival experience day, where you can go and spend the day in an abandoned shopping mall or old manor house, get given a shotgun, and are tasked with surviving against hoardes of rampaging zombies.  Now obviously until my research is complete there are currently no such things as zombies, which is why they require sporting (but slightly deranged) folk to dress up as zombies and take on the appropriate undead roles for the enjoyment of all.

Well it seems the zombie manor house (located in Warrington, just south of Manchester) is in need of new zombies, so on Thursday June 28th there were auditions run at Pineapple Dance Studio in London to find the perfect walking corpse.

It was a bit of a spur of the moment thing. I only found out about the auditions through Stephen Fry's Twitter feed on Tuesday night, but luckily was able to get the day off at short notice.  At this point I didn't even know if I could feasibly make it to Warrington and back every other weekend even if I got the job, but thought the audition itself would be a good laugh.  So through insane storms I trudged, and against all odds I made it to the doors of the studio in one (very wet) piece.

Seeing as I've never tried applying any kind of horror movie makeup before I just turned up as myself, and once I'd registered I was swiftly lead off to have some wonderful zombie touches applied to my face, and you can see the results yourself!

The actual audition only lasted a few minutes. There was a brief video interview of my zombie character (How did you die? What's your favourite organ to eat? Etc.), followed by a brief interview of myself (Where have you travelled from? Do you mind being shot at with ballistic weapons? Etc.), and then the moment where all of the zombie impressions at the pub finally paid off.  I was asked to leave the room and re-enter in zombie mode, and once I heard an audio cue ("Oh shit, it's a zombie!) I had to go into attack mode and launch myself at the audition panel.

Once that was over all of the zombies just milled around outside the studios, just chatting and following random passers-by down the street.  And when it was all over we were taken down the pub for drinks :) It should be noted that the pub was about a 10-15 minute walk away, and we all (roughly 50 of us at this point) stayed in character for the shamble through the streets of London. We got some strange looks, but it was all good fun!  Unfortunately I couldn't stay too late on account of the 4 hour journey home, but I enjoyed the post-audition mingle nonetheless.  And I stayed in makeup all the way home.

First corals

When I first set up my fish tank at the beginning of February there were only three things I particularly wanted for it; a clownfish, a cleaner shrimp, and a piece of coral.  Obviously as the weeks and months went on my ambitions grew, and my aquarium is now host to a whole undersea menagerie, but out of my initial wishlist the only thing still missing was some coral.  This wasn't down to any kind of supply problems with the store or anything like that - indeed they have an entire 10 foot tank filled with nothing but coral!  The simple problem was that corals need an established and settled tank to thrive in, and it's not recommended to add them into any tank until it's about 6 months old.

So on Sunday when I went in to get the salt water for my fortnightly water change I ended up picking up a couple of very interesting and beautiful specimens!  To be honest I went in hoping to get this elusive anemone for my clowns, but they were still waiting for stock to arrive so I ended up with my nose in the coral tank instead.  Here's what I ended up with:

I went with this two pieces of mushroom coral, which were together on this lump of living rock in the tank.  They're a type of soft coral and are apparently quite hardy which makes them well suited to beginners such as myself.  I've named the one on the left Sigismund, and the slightly larger one on the right Ahriman.

Then there was this guy.  I missed it to start with, as it was anchored onto a very small piece of rock, and is simply a very thin, green spiral, looping its way upwards.  As it didn't have a price on it and it wasn't like any other type of coral I've ever seen I wasn't sure what it was!  I asked the guy who I usually deal with in the store and he didn't have a clue, so he took the default option of offering to sell it me for £3 (whenever I discover strange and unexpected things in their tanks, they just offer them to me for £3 and I usually go for them!).  Obviously for that price I couldn't resist another new addition for the tank so I took it home, got it settled in and started Googling.  It didn't take me long to find out that this is a piece of spiral wire coral, which is a type of hard coral.  Since this photo was taken I've repositioned it to have a high up, central position in the tank, and it looks quite spectacular!

So there we are, my first three corals!  I may get another one in a few weeks, but due to the size of the tank I should probably leave it at that.  Now I'm just waiting for the anemone for my clowns, and a mandarin to round off the group.  Stay tuned for more pictures!