IMATS London Visit
Hey I enjoyed Saturday at IMATS London.
Many thanks to those makeup artists who spared me some of their valuable time, especially Davy Jones, Neill Gorton and Charles Porlier. Looking at the work Davy did with HybridFX for the BBC’s Hyperdrive one can only despair that such excellent work can go into such complete dross. But the prosthetics for Sienna Guillory on display at Neill’s stand have got me practically drooling over the prospect for the later episodes of The Virgin Queen.
Neill Gorton’s keynote prosthetics application drew a big and appreciative crowd. And that was some big silicone appliance he used on the guy from MouldLife!
The MUD presentation on ‘Prosthetics in about an Hour’ was a hoot and left me breathless. I liked their female Samurai demon too.
Charles Porlier gave what sounded like a heap of sensible advice for any aspiring makeup artist looking to choose a makeup school. And if you missed it then look out for the Makeup Schools back issue of Makeup Artist Magazine.
As always the sheer patience of the bodypainting models totally astounded me: they standing there being painted when I arrived and some of them were still being painted when I left!
Oh yeah, just how many times can you plug one book during a makeup application? There should have been a prize on the Joe Blasco stand for whoever got the answer right. Better still there should be a legal limit.
Introducing the competition like in the US show was a very positive move and an added interest on the floor of the exhibition.
Now if only PPI would decide to come next year and bring some of their PPI Players. If there is one thing the London show is missing it is high quality prosthetic makeup demonstrations on the floor of the exhibition where you can see what is happening up close.
One thing Michael Key and Makeup Artist Magazine should consider is how they can develop this as an International and European show. There seems to be little effort put into communicating in any language other than English: for instance there appeared to be no multilingual version of the Program nor any multilingual announcements. The cost of simultaneous translation for the keynote speakers into French and/or German may well be prohibitive but there is no reason why it should not be possible to provide transcripts or even summaries.
