An Interview with SCARE Makeup Queen, Robin McShaffry

When was that makeup class you held recently?

June 13th at Mangia Pizza's meeting room.

What kind of techniques did you teach?

Basic traditional theatrical makeup, including harping about highlights and shadows. Tools orientation, discussion of types of makeup, latex, bruises, lacerations and application. Nora Evans was instrumental in getting together the teaching materials since she has recent training in "moulage" makeup - which is what they use for emergency preparedness training/trauma simulation. Nora teaches me stuff all the time. So we did theatrical character makeup followed by trauma makeup. Put them together and you have zombies.

Will you be holding any more classes in the future?

YES starting in August. Dates and location TBD

What will this year's makeup be like?

This year's makeup will be very, very bloody and a lot of fun. Since our undead are not risen-from-the-grave, but freshly or recently infected, we get to play with several levels of zombie-ism. The infected bite or try to eat the un-infected, thus infecting them. Once infected, they go around trying to eat people and other fresher zombies. So, makeup will range from recently infected and beginning to show symptoms (red eye lines, bite mark) to full-on new zombie (been attacked, been attacking, trauma, fresh torn flesh, blood), to veteran zombie (wounds with greenish/black goo instead of blood - zombies don't bleed but that doesn't mean they don't ooze. Been around a while, covered in blood.) to boss monster (heavy foam latex prosthetics, missing parts, large). Zombies that get in guests' faces will be more detailed than distant zombies.

What kind of special effects makeup will you do?

We will be doing a lot of bites and lacerations made with silicone or latex. Edwin and team will make several gallons of good Edwin Blood and Edwin Goo. We will design a few partial prosthetic pieces for close-up zombies and also a big project for the final boss monster. Eric and his team have already started drawings!

Do you use any special supplies to create these effects?

Yes, lots. Starting with clay, plaster and cement for design and going all the way to very specific Hollywood grade foam latex recipes and medical adhesive. Everything is pretty specialized - the brushes, sponges, makeup, pigments, glues, everything is all specific to the job. Many effects can be made with things laying around the house, but mostly you need specialized equipment in order to have the makeup stay on for 4+ hours in the elements. SCARE's budget buys all of these specialized tools and supplies.

Do you need volunteers to help with makeup? If so, about how many?

YES! Starting at the beginning of build, we will be sculpting and forming wounds, lacerations and bites from clay. So we want people who would like to sculpt in clay and learn how to make good appliances. We will also want people to help with making plaster molds. This will happen at the build site. Then we will transfer and set up makeup appliance production lab at my house in south Austin. Mixing the foam, baking it, cleanup and painting all have to be done under environment-controlled conditions (basically, in the A/C). That will need a couple of team members. Then on rehearsal and run-nights, we will need 6-8 makeup artists per night to apply basic, medium and advanced makeups under some pretty tight time constraints. That crew has several people already, but we always need more trained FX makeup artists. Taking my class and showing me what you can do counts as training to do basic makeup.

Do you want potential makeup volunteers to contact you directly, or just contact the volunteer coordinator?

Potential makeup volunteers can ask me any relevant questions at robin@mcshaffry.com. Volunteers should definitely contact volunteer@scareforacure.org and may also contact me as well.

Anything else you'd like to add?

Nah! :)

Be sure to check out Robin and her team's handiwork at this year's SCARE for a CURE, or better yet, come on out and help!

:)