vampire — Matt Goodlett's Makeup Blog | Tips, Trends & Techniques

I am always one for a challenge when it comes to doing what I love. Not only challenges against other people but myself. Maybe 2 months ago or so ago Scare Factor ( https://www.thescarefactor.com/ ) was looking for a team to sponsor for a Monster Make-Off competition ( https://www.ohiohalloweenandhauntersconvention.com/monster-make-off/ ). I didn't really have much more information than that when I threw my teams hat into the ring. I later found out we won the sponsorship so then I had to build a team and come up with a concept. I also had to secure some more sponsors because it was going to be an expense we had not anticipated. Luckily our haunt the Devil's Attic ( http://thedevilsattic.com/darknessfalls/ ) and the contact company I'm partnered with, Primal ( https://us.primalcontactlenses.com/ ) came through for us.

I keep saying us but I haven't mentioned the team. Mary Proctor would be my second makeup artist on this challenge and we had a model. Once we got the theme which was Classic Horror with a modern twist I made the choice to do a Lizard Alien kind of based off the 80's television series "V". I had a beautiful female lizard facial prosthetic that would have been perfect from Woochie ( https://www.woochie.com/ ). The idea was that they were on our planet in search of water. We had plans of putting together a post apocalyptic space suit and it was going to be very cool. I'm using past tense because we had to change course.

After reading the rules a bit more it said that full facial prosthetics were not allowed. I toyed with the idea of trimming the lizard prosthetic down but I didn't want to destroy such a cool piece. That said I also had a furrowed brow prosthetic also from Woochie. From there I decided we would do a vampire in the vein of the lost boys and or buffy. With the theme being classic horror, it doesn't get much more classic than vampires. I threw the idea out to the team, asking how we were going to dress our vampire especially since I knew they were judging on costuming.

Just to get things rolling I threw out some ideas to the team; Victorian, Punk Rock Lost Boys Style, Modern and Classy like the Vampires in Underworld, or Maybe Elizabeth Bathory with no costume but bathed in blood. Without much hesitation our Model chose Bathory. I knew doing a pretty much nude character would be a risk for a couple reasons. Firstly I knew they were judging costuming and we would have none. Secondly I knew it meant a lot more makeup to do and skin to cover. I like the idea of the challenge of doing a full body makeup so we decided to just go for it.

About two weeks from the competition I got a message from our model saying she had to back out. This created a problem for several reasons. I then had to find a model that was willing to travel with us, be put in monster makeup, be willing to be pretty much nude and have little to no tattoos. Luckily we were able to find Halle Brandt from Nashville. She fit the criteria and look for what we had planned and she was down for anything. Standing at 5'9 I knew once we had heals and tall wig styled by Matthew Tyldsley that she would be an imposing presence.

Unfortunately I read the itinerary wrong and instead of leaving at 6am which was already early we would have to leave at 3am. Halle having driven from Nashville the day before slept in the back seat while Mary kept me awake. The competition was at the Mansfield Reformatory which is a historic old prison that is now shut down. It is also where they filmed Shawshank Redemption. The building was amazing and so cool to be in. We quickly hauled in our gear and got set up.

When we tested our airbrushes I had a minor heart attack because my compressor wasn't working. Having a compressor go down on me before I thought it had happened again and while I had a spare it wasn't as good. Turns out there was no power, for anyone. With it being such an old building the breaker wasn't built to power all those air compressors and hair dryers at once. We waited over and hour and a half not knowing when they were going to call for us to start. While it was stressful it gave us an opportunity to meet and talk with our fellow artists which was nice. When they finally called for us to start we were more than ready to go.

With only and hour and forty five minutes Mary and I decided I would focus on the face and chest while she did the hands and the rest. They let us put in our contacts before the time started for sanitation reasons and they were the perfect look for this. I wanted her to look scary but also beautiful. about forty minutes in the fire alarm went off and our MC started calling for us to vacate. Luckily someone came in and stopped us and we were able to continue. Mary did a great job on the hands and once we got everything mottled out we were able to start on contouring and highlights.

Two days before the competition I was asked to write a bio for our character. I thought it was for the other contestants to read and I didn't really want anyone to know what we were doing so I made it super long, thinking it would turn people off from reading it. With Bathory being an actual historic figure I also wanted it to read like a wiki article. Little did I know that the MC, "Crazy Bob" would be reading them off during the time we all had for makeup. Sorry about that Bob, below is what he had to read.

Countess Elizabeth Báthory

(August 7th 1560 – Present Day) is a Hungarian noblewoman and “serial killer” from the noble family of Báthory. She has been labeled by Guinness World Records as the most prolific female murderer. The highest number of victims cited during Báthory's trial was 650. Despite the evidence against Elizabeth, her family's influence kept her from facing trial. She was imprisoned in December 1610 within Čachtice Castle in Upper Hungary (now Slovakia) and held in solitary confinement in a windowless room until what was thought to be her death four years later.

The stories of her sadistic serial murders are verified by the testimony of more than 300 witnesses and survivors as well as physical evidence and the presence of horribly mutilated dead, dying, and imprisoned girls found at the time of her arrest. Stories describing her vampire-like tendencies (most famously the tale that she bathed in the blood of virgins to retain her youth) were recorded years after her death. Some insist she inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula though there is no evidence to support this hypothesis. Nicknames and literary epithets attributed to her include “The Blood Countess” and “Countess Dracula”.

Elizabeth had a couple of loyal followers, Anna Pap and Borbala Vadas, whom believed the tales of her being a vampire and the women exhumed Báthory’s body weeks after her death. These women desired to become vampires after having heard the remarkable stories of Báthory’s ritual involving bathing in virgin blood to maintain a beautiful youth look. However, the women knew they couldn’t do this without guidance of an existing vampire. Pap and Vadas believed that she died from being starved of blood and took it upon themselves to revive Báthory. According to Pap’s diary, the two placed the body in a tub and poured in the blood of 4 virgins allowing the body to soak in hopes of reviving their beloved noblewoman. After a day or so, fear of being caught for the murder of four women overpowered their wants to bring Báthory back to the world of the living and they fled Upper Hungary. Soon after, Anna Pap was found dead by authorities having been drained of all blood with 2 puncture wounds on her inner thigh. Borbala Vadas was never seen or heard from again. Authorities never found the body of Elizabeth Báthory and kept it secret to not scare the public.

Elizabeth Báthory is alive (undead) and well. Though still feeding and bathing in the blood of her victims, she has maintained a low profile. To mask her murders she often times mimics serial killers such as Fritz Haarmann, Tsutomu Miyazaki, Richard Chase, and Andrei Chikatilo to name a few. She rarely, if ever, uses her fangs as to not give proof to vampire existence. She has been known to leave behind bodies from time to time with the trademark puncture wounds on the inner thighs. Many cold cases of gruesome murders and missing persons can be attributed to her. With virgins being harder to come by in our society she often times settles for “spoiled” flesh which has brought out a more vampiric look and tendencies in her. She still seeks out virgins so the innocent should beware. Vampires are real and Countess Elizabeth Báthory is the mother of all.

When they called for twenty minutes left I had to start on the pretty aspect of the makeup in the eyes, highlights, lips and adding gold flake for some over the top beauty. Mary took iced gold shimmer powder and dusted her body with it to give her some glints. with 10 minutes left we started applying blood but at the same time we were struggling with not covering up our hard work. That said with it being Elizabeth Bathory, covering her in blood was needed. Then we topped it all off with some awesome jewelry and our wig.

I usually like to give the people involved with projects I write blogs about a chance to weigh in on their experience. Since it was Halle's first time doing something like this I definitely wanted to know what she thought. When I asked all she had to say was, "I can’t think of what I’d say for the blog other than that it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever gotten to do." I will take that as a good thing.

Some people had done a lot of big costuming incorporating lights and other things. We took a huge risk and just focused on makeup. We knew it would be an uphill battle and that we wouldn't place and we were right. There were three judges, two f which were makeup artists and one was a layman. While we didn't win the two makeup artists judges gave us near perfect scores which I considered a win. We met a lot of cool people and got to do a makeup and character we were all very proud of. We hope to do more of these and create more characters.

In this industry making good connections is so important and more often than not leads to other opportunities. I did makeup on a fashion photo shoot with an amazing team a while back in Louisville, ky. Like me, our model Melanie Smith is a makeup artist in a haunted attraction. Her makeup manager at her haunt is none other than Aryn Fox from Skin Wars. I was happy to just be doing beauty makeup on Melanie because I don’t feel my body paint is anywhere near as good as Aryn’s work. Granted her style of body paint is just a different style than mine. She is definitely an artist I look up to though.

Towards the end of the shoot Melanie told me about this Gallery Hop that was happening in Lexington, Ky. Three O Studio was doing a nude photography exhibit and wanted to do something a little different to bring people in. They thought a live body painting would go well with the photos they were displaying. Melanie asked if I would be interested in doing the body paint. I don’t know if she waited until meeting me and working with me to ask and see if we got along first or it had just slipped her mind up to that point. I wouldn’t blame her for either. Her having worked with an amazing talent like Aryn Fox was definitely intimidating. With that said painting for a live audience was intriguing.

“I’ve been a body paint model numerous times, and most of them have been live paints. So walking into the studio, knowing that people would be stairing at me during the entire process, was just like another day at work for me. I had also worked with Matt before so I knew we would have a blast.” -Melanie Smith

After talking to Bill Cole the organizer I accepted the job. Other than doing the body paint live there was a huge catch. We wanted photographers in attendance to be able to have some time to shoot the final piece. In doing so I would only have about two and a half hours to complete the body paint live all the while people talking to me and asking me questions. I like a good challenge but I felt I had bit off a bit more than I could chew. I have felt that way before though and I have yet to not have it turn out well.

I was given free reign to paint whatever subject matter I pleased. Being given creative freedom was another reason I was interested in this job. I decided I would go with something abstract. It would be simple yet dynamic. With it being abstract no one would be able to see if anything was wrong because there would be no frame of reference. Not to mention if I screwed up at all I could work it into the finished work. Plus I love doing more abstract type work so I saw it as a win win.

Two days before the event I was sitting on my couch and I just started flipping through a coffee table book I have “Goth-Icky”. It’s a picture book filled with retro pop art Halloween designs by Charles S. Anderson Design Company. If you are a fan of Halloween I highly recommend it. Looking through the art work in the book it struck me. My model Melanie and I both love Halloween and doing something in that theme would be really cool. When I was painting more canvas I did a lot of cell shaded type pop art zombies and monsters so I was excited.

Since it was so late when the pop Halloween idea struck me I slept on it. The next day I starting sketching it out with a yellow high lighter and then refined the sketches with black marker. I would then run the sketches through a copy machine which would not copy the highlighter and leave me with just the black. I just kept doing that process until I got it right. Given the subject matter I knew people would expect more Halloween horror type colors like oranges, reds, purples, blacks and greys. I love all those colors and they were all my first instinct as well so that is exactly why I didn’t want to do it. I chose a kind of bubble gum and cotton candy color scheme using pinks and blues.

Pinks and blues aren’t typically a pallet I work with so I was hoping it would look cool because I had not sketched it out in full color. I talked it over with Melanie when she showed up to the event and she was totally game.

“I loved the concept Matt had come up with. We both work at different haunted houses and have a general love for all things creepy and Halloween. So when he explained we would be doing a vampire-esque paint I was all for it.” –Melanie Smith

Melanie is so easy going I think I could have told her I was going to paint her like a farm animal and she would have been game. I didn't want to use a stencil so I took my drawing of the head which was the right size for her body and I poked some holes in it. I poked the holes in the eyes, the teeth and the windows of the castle. I then placed it on her where I wanted it and painted through the holes on to her giving myself guidelines. Starting with the white and working my way to using the black last was strange in front of a live audience. I knew that the black paint at the end is what was going to pull it all together but the on lookers didn’t know that. It did bother me a little bit when people would show up and leave only seeing the white, blue and pink blobbed on before it really looked like anything. I was very happy with the finished piece and wish the people that left early would have stayed to see it.

“I love modeling paint because I am able to bring life to someone’s work. These artists spend hours on each paint, so I want to be sure to represent that character or theme to the best of my ability. But what was so cool about this paint was that it was already me. This piece had “me” written all over it: from the colors, to the design, to the crazy wild hair. It was so much fun to bring out that side of myself!” –Melanie Smith

I felt it very much fit my personality andMelanie’s as well. She seemed to really like the final look which is what I was going for. I knew if she was happy with it having worked with great artists before me I knew I had done a good job.

Every opportunity no matter how big or small can lead to your next great thing. Weather that opportunity be creative freedom, money, fulfillment or whatever just keep pushing forward. I’m not saying do things you have no interest in but do things out of your comfort zone that challenge and scare you. If you don’t learn or take something away from every gig you do you’re not paying attention.

Team Demon Fabulous: Moster Make-Off "Elizabeth Bathory"

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