Personal Research Project - Artefact 2
The aim of my second artefact was to measure the time-cost effectiveness of the design processes for both traditional special effect techniques and digital techniques. To do this I decided to create two zombie creatures, one using prosthetics and make-up, and the other using digital technology whilst filming, photographing and timing the processes.

To create my prosthetic zombie I hired my make-up artist friend Zannah for assistance and used liquid latex, nose putty, toilet paper and face make-up to build up an actor’s face. We began by applying a layer of liquid latex and then used toilet paper to create a wrinkly skin texture. We then used a combination of nose putty, latex and toilet paper to modify the actor’s features such as his eye sockets, nose and chin to give a deformed zombie like appearance. Finally we applied white, black, green and red face paint to give the desired look I required. This process took 1 hour and 55 minutes to complete and found it to be a lot of fun.

To create my digital zombie I used Adobe After Effects to create a similar effect on the same actor. This was a more complicated process but only took 1 hour and 40 minutes to apply the desired zombie effect, however it took me an extra 20 minutes to motion track just 2 seconds of footage.

Overall I found traditional make-up special effects to be much more time-cost effective than digital even though the design process took longer. This is because even once the digital effect is complete, the artist still has to carefully motion track or animate every millisecond of footage, where once the make-up effect is complete you simply have to film it.

For my next artefact I shall be evaluating the effectiveness of each special effect by shooting some footage with each and gaining feedback.

Here is the design process footage for the traditional prosthetic make-up technique:


And here is the design process for digital technique using After Effects: