• Special FX Guest Artists in Town!

    • February 3, 2017
    • Author | Celena Rubin
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    The Art of Makeup has branched out and expanded our programs from not only teaching beauty, fashion, and character makeup, to now also specializing in the complex education of special fx makeup! This has been very exciting for us, but also very challenging, requiring a team of support from the best fx artists in the industry. We are fortunate to have relationships with incredibly talented and experienced makeup artists who want to get involved!

    First off, we are so lucky to have developed a friendship with Michael Key, creator of IMATS and Makeup Artist Magazine. He has been very supportive of this new endeavor and has referred us to Thomas Surprenant who assisted in designing our new Character & Special FX  program and will be personally instructing the classes with 30 years of experience behind him, working on some of the best films that have come out of Hollywood. You can read more about him here

    Michael Key also led us to Emmy award  winner Will Huff who will be on our advisory board. Will also won the Makeup and Hair Stylist Guild Award for Special Effects on the feature film Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. He worked on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Thor, Pearl Harbor, and many other features noted for their outstanding special effects work.

    All of these relationships led us to Denver based Todd Debreceni, also an accomplished special fx artist, creating wounds for films such as Captain Phillips starring Tom Hanks, but possibly most famous for his internationally known book he wrote, Special Makeup Effects for Stage and Screen: Making and Applying Prosthetics. Todd is also an expert on creating foam latex ovens specifically for the use of making special effects appliances. We want the best for our school and our new fx program, and the way to get it was to go directly to the source for help. Todd flew to Portland and built the oven for us. It can’t get any better than that!

    And in about a week we have another guest flying into town, David Woodruff. David will be guest teaching our Out of the Kit FX class for our current Master Class students. David is currently wrapping a film with Will Smith, working on the newest Predator vs. Aliens film, and worked on X-Men Origins: Wolverine, X-Men: First Class, The Thing, and many more films. We are so lucky to have him too!

    The total sum of all of the talent that has been flying in and out of Portland lately is immeasurable, and the pool of talent that will be staying is only going to get larger! We can’t wait to see these doors of creativity open and the magic of transformation begin!