Star Wars!

For the love of the force…A Star Wars fan convention.

Back in the summer of 2015 we were approached by Carl Whiteley to get involved in a large Fan Convention called ‘For the Love of the Force’.

We were asked to recreate a troop of Ewoks from Return of the Jedi, Cantina band members and Greedo. We were also asked to recreate Bib Fortuna with Alan Ruscoe who played it in Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace.

Because of our Academy and what it stands for, I wanted to bring in students who have come through our doors and have impressed me with there quality, so I brought along Brogan Sharp, Anna McIntrye and Laura Rosemary Phillipson to help myself and my partner, Justyna Harrison build the characters needed for the event which happened on the 4-6th December in Manchester.
Justyna over saw the build of the Ewoks (we made 8 in total) Justyna sculpted one of the characters and we moulded him in fibreglass. Each of the Ewoks were produced in a soft foam which Justyna painted and furred each character to make them individual, She handmade all the costumes for the Ewoks too.

Brogan was responsible for sculpting the Cantina & Greedo heads. She moulded them in Crystacal R plaster and ran them in Latex, Brogan along with Laura seamed and painted them, We had to make 3 Cantina heads and 2 Greedo masks for the Convention. Anna sculpted the hands for the characters. It was a great job all round getting these characters made by my Ex Students and they all worked together as a team which is great to see.

I was responsible to recreating Bib Fortuna for the event. I originally sculpted and applied him when I worked for Nick Dudman as part of his crew on the Phantom Menace back in 1997 when they shot this film. It was great to redo Alan’s make up again but this time we used silicone instead of the Foam latex we used on the Phantom Menace.
We brought Alan over to the Academy and we lifecasted him again, and using reference images from both the Episode 1 character and also from return of the Jedi, I sculpted him over a 2 week period. Along with Brogan (who sculpted & Moulded the Tentacles) we ran all the pieces in Pro-Gel 10 silicone. The Tentacles were run in a soft foam because of the weight issues of having them in silicone.

It was such a fun event to be a part of, seeing all our Ewoks in the Endor set, the creature masks up in the cantina Bar and Alan walking around as Bib Fortuna in the event was very cool.

Roll on 2016.

2014, a year to remember!

As we say goodbye to 2014 and hello to 2015, I just wanted to share with everyone what a year it’s been for us and the Academy.

This time last year I was working on one of the most anticipated films of 2015, AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, I spent the following 5 months working alongside some great artists on this movie. (And I managed to also work on the new re-telling of the fabled Peter Pan story called PAN in between working on the MARVEL Movie)

I Finished Avengers 2 at the beginning of May 2014 and had less than 2 weeks to move myself, my wife and my little dog up to Manchester to start our new exciting business, the Shaune Harrison Academy. For months prior to the move, my wife and I spent most weekends driving back and forth up and down the motorway to visit Manchester and look for potential Academy spaces.

Justyna had done an amazing job at organising the whole thing and eventually finding us this incredible building and location right next to Manchester’s Media City Complex.

We also managed to fit in doing our Witch Demo over at the UMAE (www.umae.co.uk) in London in April and to show everybody exactly what the Academy had to offer to students, the response was overwhelming and positive.

Witch makeup at UMAE 2014

Our whole Philosophy with the Academy is to teach the next generation of Prosthetic make up artists how to achieve their dreams, our classes are small so everyone gets that ‘one to one’ feeling  and to not feel lost in a large class.

In July we worked alongside the great PS Composites (www.ps-composites.com) guys and girls at the London based IMATS make up show (www.imats.net) were we made a good impression with our Zombie character.

Zombie Makeup at IMATS London 2014

The support we’ve had since moving up to Manchester has been incredible, we’ve met some amazing people and companies. The quality of our students has impressed us so much with their ambition and drive.

In October we hit the Halloween season and this was just crazy, we were  working on a massive music/Halloween event in Manchester were our students made up over 30 silicone zombie characters for VEVO.

Labrinth

Ella Eyre’s band

Our Academy has been in Popular magazines, newspapers, TV, Radio and numerous Sci-Fi and horror conventions. (http://shauneharrisonacademy.com/Home/Press).

We rounded the year off with our 6 week Prosthetics course which was a great success.

6 week Prosthetic Course November 2014

6 week Prosthetic course September 2014

So once again thank you to everyone who has supported the Academy over the past 12 months and here’s to an exciting future…

See you all in 2015.

Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!

Labrinth

The weeks leading up to Halloween 2014 have been utterly crazy over at the Shaune Harrison Academy.
I think the last time I actively got involved in Halloween was 20 years ago when I was working out in Toronto, Canada. I usually feel that it’s a ‘busman’s holiday’ for me. But this year it’s different.
Since this is our first Halloween with the Academy I wanted to embrace the festivities!…Oh boy did we!!!

Grimmfest Manchester 2014

It all started 3 weeks before Halloween when I made and applied my Zombie character for Grimmfest in Manchester. This is my 3rd time over at this awesome horror festival, I love going there and just talking about horror films with some great people, a few days after this event I was contacted by a Music Company called VEVO (check out their name on most music videos on Youtube) to see if I could supply them with a few zombie characters to give out vouchers for a music event happening over Halloween…

Zombie Walk 2014

The following 2 weeks became absolutely crazy, (Sunday 26th October)I was asked by a good friend, Carl Whiteley to do some zombie demo’s over at the Manchester Zombie Walk, My academy supplied 2 zombie character and we were interviewed by the local press. (Tuesday 28th October) I did a Zombie prosthetic demonstration over at the Manchester Metropolitan University in front of a captured audience. The next day Wednesday I was asked to go over to the Liverpool Echo for a Halloween special and talk about my career and my Academy, (Thursday 30th October) I fulfilled a childhood dream by going onto a classic British children’s show, BLUE PETER (to get a blue peter badge is such an iconic thing to own) I did a zombie make up on Radzi, one of the presenters on the show then I did a live make up demonstration which was fun but scary!

CBBC Blue Peter

The actual day of Halloween I came back to Media City in Manchester to do a radio interview on BBC Radio Manchester and whilst I was being interviewed I applied a Zombie bite on the DJ Andy Crane…Doing a make up on the radio was very odd but I suppose with the whole Social Media thing that happens nowadays, nothing is a surprise anymore…

Labrinth

Ella Eyre’s band

Then on Saturday 1st November came the main event, The Academy had to bring in over 18 prosthetic artists who would be capable of applying multi piece Zombie make ups for the Vevo Halloween Event which was staged in Manchester in front of 5,000 people. We had to do 18 full on zombie make ups, numerous wounds and killings as well as making up some of the special guests that were at the event, we did make ups on the singer Labrinth and his band, we also did Ella Eyre’s band which we made them look like skeleton faces. In the end we did 32 make ups which was great fun but hard work.

All I can say is roll on Halloween 2015!
Til next time…:-)

Shaune’s Masterclass – Leprosy makeup!

“If you’re going to catch leprosy, it’s better to catch it from money than from people.”

I recently watched a great film which I hadn’t seen in a while, It was the classic Steve McQueen film PAPILLON. I really wanted to revisit an effect on one of the lead characters who has Leprosy. I tried this effect out a few months ago but it was just generic pieces so this time I thought It would be interesting to do it for my 5 day Master Class over at the Shaune Harrison Academy.

On the Monday I came into the Academy with a selection of Poppadom’s (yes poppadom’s!!!) and explained to the students what I was going to do with them.

I Lifecasted my performer in Silicone and produced a Plaster head to be sculpted onto.

I moulded a selection of Poddadom’s in PS Composites PS-28 moulding silicone, once I peeled the silicone off the Poddadom’s I scraped melted down Monster Clay all over the moulds.  I peeled off the dried Monster Clay off the silicone and gently pressed them down onto the lifecast, and with a bit of sculpting & tweaking I managed to finish off the head piece over the next few hours.

Poppadom’s

I floated the head in water and on the next day removed the sculpt gently off the lifecast. The forehead and cheek pieces were laid down gently onto a white Conti board and finished off with the detail and blending. The nose piece I wanted to place onto a core of the performers nose, so I produced a SG-700 epoxy core from the original Silicone life cast mould (I deliberately used Life Casting Silicone so I could produce numerous cores out of the same mould) I gently placed the Nose sculpt onto the Epoxy core and finished the piece off.

I moulded the Flat pieces in T-13 from PS Composites and then moulded the nose piece.

I ran all the pieces in Pro-Gel 10 from PS Composites and softened them to 80%.

On the day of the lifecast I applied all the pieces and Painted them with PPI Skin Illustrator palettes.

Applying prosthetic pieces

The Application time took just over 2 hours.

It’s great to try out these methods of moulding food as the results are quite interesting. It’s also good to try things that are a ‘little outside the box’…

Next time you’re walking down the food isle in your local supermarket, check out the fruit & veg section, things may jump out at you with textures…:-)

 

Zombie at IMATS London 2014

For this years London Imats show I decided to do a Zombie character but put my own spin on it and make it different to what’s been done far too many times in the past…

Once I had cast my model Ben Ross’s head, I started straight away with the sculpting process, I only had 2 and a half weeks to do everything myself so I had to come up with a way of speeding up the process.

To make the skin look all decayed and old I used tissue and latex and stippled it onto a board, when I was happy with the shapes I took a quick Moulding Silicone off it (PS28 silicone from PS Composites) Then I melted down some Plastilene which I scrapped very thinly into the silicone so I’d gotten these really cool & organic shapes which would of taken a long time to sculpt free hand.

Zombie Makeup at IMATS London 2014

The head sculpt was pretty much finished sculpted in less than a week (I was also teaching on a few occasions with my Academy classes) I broke the make up down into 3 pieces; a full cowl piece, full face piece and a small bottom lip. I’d also made a set of decayed looking hands.

Due to the fast turnaround of this make up I decided to mould all my prosthetics in fibreglass which cuts out making silicone jacket moulds. With only a week left I moulded the pieces and ran the pieces in Pro Gel 10 softened to 80% for the face and bottom lip, the cowl piece was softened to 60% as I didn’t want it to become too ‘baggy’ on the head which would stretch out of shape a little. The other important thing I did with the neck section is that I cored it out to make it slightly tighter on Ben’s real neck, otherwise It again may have become a little too baggy.

I pre-painted the pieces with a mixture of RS silicone fluid, Diluent and Oil Paints, this method is great and bonds to the silicone and Cap Plastic extremely well.

While I was busy making all the pieces I was on a few occasions driving around the Yorkshire dales. Bradford was the location for Darren Grassby who made me some fab rotting old teeth for the character, and we also headed up to the picturesque village of Glossop to get Ben’s lenses fitted by the lovely Vicki Warrington of EyeWorks For Film. (Cantor & Nissels worked with EyeWorks For Film on the look of the ‘dead’ eyes for my Zombie)

As I was thinking of the character I decided to give him a severed hand that he’s handcuffed too. (who knows what happened to the rest of him?!)

The wig was actually a old wig I had from a previous make up that I carefully cut up and retro fitted it to my character and It worked out really well.

I picked one of my Academy students, Brogan Sharp to assist me in the make up process as she impressed me with her application and painting whilst on my course.

The application day took a little over 4 hours which seems like quite a long time but as we had so many people wanting to see the Zombie being created and lots of questions being asked, I tried to answer as many as I could during the time.

I just wanted to thank everyone for all their lovely comments about the make up, I couldn’t have wishes for anything better, it went down a storm at IMATS. I also wanted to thank David Power & Kristyan Mallett at PS Composites and there awesome staff for making me feel so welcome on their stand and to the show’s organiser Michael Key for putting the whole thing together at London’s Olympia. (I think there was over 4,000 on the Sunday!)

Until the next make up event…