The main FX section of the site is divided in two big branches: Make Up FX and Visual FX.
Make Up FX section deals with my past experience - between 1998 and 2002 - as Special Make Up FX artist. I've now abandoned this activity, to dedicate myself to computer and software based Visual FX. During these four years I made Make Up and Special FX for several low budget movies. I've been involved in four digital short films (Degenerazione, L'Albero Capovolto, L'ultima Cena and Neve) directed by Ivan Zuccon - which are not illustrated at all in the Make Up FX subsections because I couldn’t collect enough material regarding these movies -, and three digital feature films by Ivan Zuccon (The Darkness Beyond, Unknown Beyond and The Shunned House), plus a feature film shot in Super 8 called Green Days, directed by Gianluca Badocco and Paolo Cogo, which are described in detailed notes and pictures you can display by clicking on thumbnails.
The Darkness Beyond, originally intended as a short movie called L'Altrove, shot in the summer of 1998,
then extended into a feature film on March 1999, was absolutely my first experience in Make Up FX.
The make up techniques I used during the summertime session (I wasn’t part of the March session) - techniques I mantained for several
years after -, were very simple and based, above all, on the use of Latex (liquid rubber in ammonia solution) as shaping material
combined with plaster mold technique to get any type of appliances and prosthetic pieces, or as glueing material
to stick up cotton, nails or whatever on actors’ body and face, in order to deform their facial features, or to
create any sort of wounds.
Except for one single effect I made using molding technique for the first time, I mostly made the effects by combining all materials directly
on the actors’ bodies and faces, finishing them with specific grease based Kryolan colors.
The Unknown Beyond was shot on August, 2000 on locations like the monumental medieval walls of Ferrara (Italy)
and the banks of the river Po.
I tried to enhance the techniques and the quality of my Make Up using Latex appliances. Basically, this technique
consists in modeling the prosthetic piece in clay and getting a mold by pouring plaster all over the clay model, which is
wrapped up in a rubber stripe wall to keep the plaster in place while drying. Once I got the mold, I used it as a negative shape
of the modeled clay and brushed liquid Latex in layers into it, sometimes adding cotton or talcum powder as thickener
material, in order to get one latex copy of the original model in clay which later on was glued on the actor’s body using proper sticking
material like Spirit Gum or Pros Aid. Though this technique takes certainly quite a long time to be set, it is the most
efficient way to create and apply detailed make up effects, especially for some kind of complex design, if compared to shaping and making
up directly on the actor’s body. Furthermore, this technique gave me the chance to pre-color the appliance with acrylics,
which are unsuitable for human skin, this way saving the expensive Kryolan colors, which are not properly made for latex surface, and
saving time on the coloring sessions.
Using the molding technique I also made the Altrovino Monster, which appears at the end of the movie, and a latex
human heart obtained from casting, using alginate, a real pig heart bought at a butcher.
In this movie I also made my first Tom Savini style effect with tubes and syringe; those kind of effects, greatly set up in
the eighties by The Gore King, I better experimented in some razor blades cut up effects I made for the movie
“The Shunned House”.
Green Days was shot in Super 8 in Marostica - Vicenza (Italy) during some weekends between September
and November, 2001. It was a typical Trash movie, whose main character was a green monster inspired by
Troma’s Toxic Avenger.
I really enjoyed doing all the special effects, which included two stages of trasformation and a final scene with the green monster’s
death by melting, the building of a cut off bloody finger prop, a bleeding forehead wound on the cop and a pictorial make up for the pale,
raped queen-screamer of the movie, plus an old fashioned Stop Motion Make Up, I had never done before.
I tried to optimize as better as I could all the knowledge and experience gained on the field during the former three years. That also was the
only chance I ever had to cast a full head of the actor who played the green monster, in order to get appliances which could properly
fit to his face and hands. I started adding balloons, placed under the latex appliances and connected to a clyster rubber pump,
in order to perform pulsing effects during the monster transformation.
This home-made movie production fitted better my life style, even if I had to travel one hour and a half by car to reach the location.
Indeed, shooting on weekends gave me the chance, during week days and nights, after I finished my daily job as a graphic designer, to prepare,
test, improve the effects I was working on, in order to be ready for the following weekend shooting session.
Unfortunately, rolling in Super 8 is pretty difficult. Due to exposure, focusing and definition problems, the biggest part of
my contribution isn’t so well visible; however, this experience was very important to me and I'm very glad I hard worked on it.
“The Shunned House” was shot in June, 2002 in Frassinelle
Polesine - Rovigo (Italy), a location twenty kilometers far from Ferrara, in an old mansion called
Cà Pesaro. Very scary place and cool for horror filming!
This was the last movie I took part of as a Make Up and Special FX artist, before shifting definitely to
Visual FX. Indeed, it was right during the movie post production, on August and September, 2002,
that I started stepping into Visual FX (visit the The Shunned House section in the Visual FX menu).
I didn't use any new materials and techniques in Make Up and Special FX, except for a bunch of
cut up effects in pure Tom Savini style. Working with tubes, syringes, fake blood and unsharp blades was very
exciting and funny. While trying to make the wrist bite effect work, something went wrong with the air compressor.
A syringe filled with blood exploded and I found myself covered with blood! The crew (me included!) died laughing.
Horror filming is in fact one of the funniest things I experimented in my life, expecially when the something goes
wrong with the special effects.
By now, the Visual FX section is about a couple of digital feature films by Ivan Zuccon: The Shunned House and
Bad Brains.
I also added some tests for an unreleased movie called Colour From The Dark, inspired by H. P. Lovecraft,
that Ivan wanted to shoot on Summer 2004 thanks to some Canadian funds which unfortunately never came.
I thought to add it to this part of the site, hoping it could be interesting.
The Shunned House was my debut movie in Visual FX.
In the past I never thought I could dedicate myself to this aspect of film making, because I was very involved in Make Up FX.
But, while searching new goads for my freelance job as illustrator and graphic designer, at the beginning of 2002,
I started testing some demo softwares for Graphic Animation and I was really amazed by the results achieved.
I suddenly realized that even small freelancers like me could produce 3D and 2D animations handling these softwares,
which you can easily use at home, on your computer, and which until not a long time ago were of exclusive usage of big professional studios.
And I understood these tools could even be used for Visual FX in Tv and movie. So, during The Shunned House
post production on summer 2002, when Ivan strarted editing I volunteered for making some Visual FX for the movie.
I borrowed from Ivan a video compositing software: Pinnacle’s Commotion, which could be installed on my old,
one single CPU Apple G4 800 Mhz, then I started.
I basically performed Rotoscoping tasks using masks and layers to separate existing backgrounds from foregrounds,
in order to substitute the back plate with stills manipulated with Photoshop. My quite long experience in using Photoshop for
publishing and illustrations helped me to get acceptable results without problems. In some shots I digitally removed meters of electrical
wires from the walls, which were too modern to be seen in a movie shot during the 20s. So, just for kidding, I decided to appear
in the movie credits as Wire&Wall Studio. Though this experience was quite boring – I spent hours in front of the
computer doing the same thing… -, I really appreciated the opportunity to step into the field.
Colour From The Dark is an unreleased movie which should have been shot during the summer of 2004 by
Ivan Zuccon with a budget partially covered by a couple of Canadian producers, who finally gave up with the
production very close to scheduled shooting days.
Anyway, the material visible in this subsection are some tests I made to try some workflows in producing digital fog >environment, a
digital crucifix which had to be deformed and liquified and a ghost-caustic visual effect which should look like an
alien creeping light, as written in the script.
All the set up and the crucifix model and animation tests have been done in Maya. Compositing has been done in
Combustion.
Click on thumbnails for in depth informations and movies about all the stages of this project. See also in the
Shotutorials section of this site for additional material in downloadable pdf format.