Zombies & TV

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned an exciting project which had been confirmed and given the green light, so I think it's about time I elaborated a little.

 

Back in January I had a phone call off the lovely folks at Wish (who I am now starting to think of as my zombie agents) saying that they'd been approached by a company filming a documentary series for the Discovery Channel, who were after someone who is just a little bit nuts about zombies.  Oddly enough they thought I'd fit the bill :)  After a few weeks with no news I'd started to forget about it (if the This Morning cancellation taught me one thing it's that nothing is set in stone), and started playing the waiting game for my next zombie role.  But eventually I was contacted again, put in touch with the show's producer, and a week or so later was sat in the corner of the flat as the film crew started tweaking the room to make it optimal for filming.  To say it's been a surreal experience doesn't quite do it justice!

As it's still yet to air I stll don't know how much I'm allowed to say about the show, but it should be hitting the small screen around the world in a few months time, and once it does I know I'll be safe to spill the beans entirely!  The working title for the series is Extreme Worlds, but with a while to go until the broadcast date that's subject to change.  Obviously I will be posting updates closer to the time.

 

In other zombie TV related news, I've got a bit part in a popular british drama series just over the horizon, along with many of the zombies from the Warm Bodies photocall, so it'll be great to work with them again :) Even better to work with them in a capacity that involves actual zombie behaviour rather than just zombie poses!  Don't get me wrong, I loved the photocall, but I do enjoy letting rip with my zombie growl, and that doesn't really come across in a photo!  Once more, I'm not going to jeapordise things by revealing more than I'm allowed to, but as soon as the show hits the air I'll be the first one jumping up and down whilst shouting "Look! It's me!!!"

 

In non-TV zombie news, my makeup attempts are coming along in leaps and bounds.  Last weekend I attended the Birmingham Memorabilia/Comic Con as a zombified version of Arthur Dent from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, and here's how I looked...

There are a few elements I'm still looking to improve, but with each passing attempt these grow fewer. I'm going to use a blacker/scabbier blood to fill in the cheek and forehead wounds in the future, as I'm still not happy with the fresh red look.  If I'm as rotten as my skin makes out, I certainly shouldn't be bleeding those kind of shades. I was happy with the teeth and the mouth blood on this occasion, but on reflection I was a bit disappointed with the eye shading.  I've done better than this before so I know I can do so again.  Oh and I love the white contact lens, I think it rounds things off just perfectly.

 

So I guess that's it for this update.  I can't wait for the documentary to air so I can embark on a full-on ramble about what an amazing weekend it was!  And I can't wait for the filming on this show in a couple of weeks!  All systems are go in the world of zombies at the moment, and here's hoping they carry on this way!



Losing hope in the human condition

I like to describe myself as a bitter and cynical person, and even though there's usually a light-hearted spin on it, I reckon I'm usually safe in using that description.  But every now and then I drop the cynicism and put a little faith in humanity, and every single time I see the true ugliness in ourselves as a species.

Today (for non-UK readers) is Comic Relief. It's something that comes around once every year or two, and as a nation we try to raise money for charitable projects at home and abroad. Now some good friends of mine are trying to raise some money for this event, and they aren't doing as well as they'd hoped. The donations close at 17:00, so with just over 2 hours to go they've raised a little over 10% of their target (just to clarify, yes I've already donated).

 

So I decided to do the best thing I could, and reach out through the wonderful medium of social networking sites.  And what was the response?  Near enough sweet FA.  5 times throughout the day I posted the link to my almost 200 followers on Twitter.  Did anyone donate?  Possibly one or two (the donations can be anonymous, so it's impossible to tell).  Now I don't like being guilt tripped into making donations, I understand that people don't always have the spare money at the right time, but it costs nothing to retweet.  If I have 200 followers, and one of them has 200 different followers, then the click of a button is all it takes to double the chances of donations coming through.  So how many retweets did any of those 5 posts get?  Not a single one.  As a species we care so little about helping eachother that clicking a button on a website is not worth the effort.

And of course Facebook was much a similar story.  On this occasion I did manage to get 2 shares from friends, for which I was very grateful.  But aside from that I saw my posts being ignored while people instead shared links to funny vidoes and competitions.  I think I found that more infuriating, the idea that people are willing to make more of an effort to share a stupid Youtube vid then they are to help out a charity.

 

Well congratulations, humanity. I popped my head out from bitterness and cynicism for just one day, and you've shown me why I shouldn't have bothered in the first place.



Edit: With half an hour to go I finally managed to get a retweet from none other than Brian Blessed!  By the time clock ticked down to zero the grand total of donations had doubled.  Thank you, Mr Blessed, for making the day's efforts seem worthwhile after all.

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.