Deeper, Bloodier, Bigger Gash

After dabbling in a branch or special effect makeup that didn’t involve blood and torn flesh I decided that I wanted to get back to it and just have some fun. I have posted before about bloody gashes but this time I decided to go a bit further and make it more of a missing chunk of flesh from arm.

Again I’ll be working with the tips from A Complete Guide to Special Effects Makeup by Japanese Makeup Artists. “A flat wound is a fake wound (37 Japanese Makeup).” Very few statements have ever been truer, there are very few wounds out there that are clean cut and even the ones that are clean still have depth, otherwise there would be no wound. While I was making this look I tool this saying to heart so when I began by building up the wax to give depth to the wound I found myself trying to find any way I could add depth and damage to the soon to be wound.

In A Complete Guide to Special Effects Makeup towards the beginning of the book it is mentioned that if the makeup is not blended into the skin without any oblivious color changes then the effect will fail and will be easy to spot as a fake. This proved to be quite a difficult hurtle to get over when I was creating this look simply because of the vast color different between my skin and the color of the wax I was using. Wax is not an easy substance to color and is made even more difficult when it is built up in such a way that too much pressure to it could cause it to collapse in on its self. After making my way through the painfully slow paint job of the torn flesh I was able to finish off the look with some fake blood and red tinting.

What do you think, should I stick with blood and gore? Or should I keep dabbling in other special effect makeup styles? 

Works Sited

Japanese Makeup Artists. A Complete Guide to Special Effects Makeup. London: Titan, 2012. Print.