With the Louisville Zombie Walk (LZW), spooky season comes a bit early in the city of Louisville Kentucky. For a lot of people the Louisville Zombie Walk, hosted by the Devil's Attic ( http://thedevilsattic.com/darknessfalls/ ) is the Kickoff to the Halloween season and us at Team Demon Fabulous couldn't be happier to be a part of that tradition. Every year for LZW Team Demon Fabulous is tasked with coming up with the Devil's Attic's signature zombie looks and this year was no different. I wanted to do something completely different this time around.
I had this really interesting prosthetic that I had picked up from Woochie ( https://www.woochie.com/ ) this past spring. It wasn't quite human but definitely had some undead elements to it. To me I saw a lot if Geiger esque Alien aspects. I have seen zombie movies ie: Wild Zero where the zombie contagion came from aliens rather than some chemical or other earthly sources. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to do something different and hopefully something no one had seen before. I like for the team to be able to do their own thing so I didn't want to push the issue but I asked if the wanted to go with a unified theme and make it look as if all of our human zombies were turned by the Radioactive Alien zombie. They seemed to like the idea so that is what we decided to go with. We had a color pallet we were going to use, slightly pulling colors from the alien but not to much as to keep them human.
Given that stereotypical alien sightings are from people off the beaten path and country folk being abducted by aliens that somehow turned into a unifying theme as well. All of our zombies ended up in overalls instead of the zombies risen from the dead in suits and ties. Primal ( https://us.primalcontactlenses.com/ was pretty clutch in getting us matching lenses for all of our zombies to pull them together. For the Human Zombies we went with the White Walker II lenses. Not exactly your typical undead look but very cool and unique.
Makeup Artist Mary Proctor and Taz Ball teamed up to create our Bubba zombie. Taz always goes as some variation of his Bubba Zombie character and for this theme he fell perfectly into place. As these zombies were turned by alien radiation, Mary didn't really have to worry about any bite marks.
Photo by Misha Kidwell
Photo by Lauren Hughes
Phoebe Conrad came back home to Team Demon Fabulous after going to Cinema Makeup School. Having done so she wanted to do something extra on actor Kristopher Thompson. She had Kris wear overalls with no shirt so she could really highlight his skeletal frame. Making his ribs and other bone structures really stand out helped give him that emaciated undead look and made him a very memorable zombie.
Photo by Misha Kidwell
Photo By Lauren Hughes
Zoe Hall is the newest member of the makeup crew so we teamed her up with Ame Ross. With Ame being a little smaller in stature it was decided to make her a little kid zombie. Dressed in capri overalls and over the top sneakers they topped her look off with a huge colorful lollipop. Something about seeing a little kid as a zombie is very unsettling and Zoe did a great job for her first make for Team Demon Fabulous.
Photo by Misha Kidwell
Photo by Lauren Hughes
A couple of days before LZW I decided to pre-paint my prosthetic to give myself more time for the application process to make sure I could get it all laid down seamlessly. I wanted him to have a very dark, almost black skin tone with bluish undertones. I had never pre-painted a prosthetic before but really enjoyed it. Once I got it all roughly painted I became a little worried about how dark it was and having to blend it. That said I left a lot of room for blending and detail work to pull it all together.
Spray-Painted Prosthetic
My actor Jeff Howell looks forward to this every year and in preparation he shaved his head and face so that the pros-aid skin adhesive wouldn't pull out any of his facial hair. This also saved me from having to use a bald cap. Once I got the prosthetic applied I painted his entire head black and then got to blending. I airbrushed on bluish white veins that mimicked electricity. From his eyes, mouth, nose and temples I built up a bright orange, pink and white to make it appear to almost be glowing with radiation from those orifices. I used the cuttlefish lenses from Primal to give him an other worldly look. to top it all off I brushed on castor seal to give his skin a bit of a shine. Our head costumer Lauren Perry killed it with an amazing alien costume that really brought the whole look together.
Photo by Misha Kidwell
Photo by Lauren Hughes
I want to thank Misha Kidwell and Lauren Hughes for taking these amazing photos of our zombies. With two different photographers we were able to get a different perspective on the same looks. I am so proud of this team. Everyone showed up and did a great job. I can't wait to see what this 2019 haunt season holds for us because I know we will kill it.
Photos by Misha Kidwell
