I Found A Career In Special Effects Makeup!!!

Growing up, I never knew what I wanted to be. I tried acting classes, but I didn't like the crowds. I tried to get into writing, but I couldn’t come up with a story to save my life. And I tried painting, but all my drawings turned out abstract, to say the least. Until one day, after a long day of doing A levels, in which I had no interest, I turned on the TV to wind down and get my mind off my future and put on a new show I had never heard of before, called Glow Up.

The TV show grabbed my attention right away. Ten talented artists from all over the UK are competing for a chance to work for Charlotte Tilbury! I watched in awe as they transformed normal people into monsters, pieces of art and zombies, and that's when I knew what I wanted to do.

I had always loved doing my makeup in the morning, especially my lip liner; it felt like my me time, a bit of self-care, if you will, but I never thought of it as a career. I remembered the one time on Halloween that my friends and I all decided to dress up as skeletons, and I spent hours transforming us into the dead. But mostly I remember the look on my friend's face when I revealed their look to them in the mirror and their shock at how real it looked.

After the episode ended and my flashback had passed, I knew that this had to be my career. I just had to find out how I could make my new dream come true.

Learning the craft of SFX

The first part of my journey unfolded pretty early on. I had experimented with SFX makeup in the past, but nothing to the extent that I saw on TV. Applying prosthetics and the techniques needed to make monsters really come to life were a mystery to me, but a mystery that I needed to uncover to achieve my dream. I immediately leapt online to find classes near me where I could learnt the art of special effects and stumbled across an in-person, nighttime beginners collage class that anyone could join straight away. I quickly signed up and sat excitedly anticipating my first day of SFX training in three days time.

The first few weeks consisted of a lot of frustration and trial and error. Not only were prosthetics a lot harder than they looked on TV, but even basic techniques such as 3D effects and texturising felt impossible at first. I had many failed projects, including a zombie that looked like a strawberry and a werewolf that looked more like a house cat. However, after a consistent few months of attending the class once a week, I started to get pretty good, and my projects really started to come alive. My dream was finally starting to come true.

Turning passion into a career

A year into my SFX classes, I finally got my first chance to use my skills on a small indie film that was being filmed around where I live, though an advert on Instagram. The advert wanted a local SFX artist to do vamprie make up for a spin-off of the Lost Boys film from the 80’s. When I got the job, I was ecstatic! Although I was only being paid a hundred pounds, it was my first job as an artist and hopefully the start of many more!

The film was a huge success in the indie scene, winning many regional and national awards and even one for makeup! From this, I gained many new bookings and even a chance to intern at the BBC, which I am halfway through today. It’s been incredible to be able to turn my passion into a career, so I can do what I love every day!