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Battles With Bits of Rubber

This podcast is a joint venture with Stuart Bray and Todd Debreceni. It's all about the making of stuff for makeup effects and prosthetics. Todd is author of 'Special Makeup Effects For Stage And Screen', what many consider to be the modern makeup FX bible. Stuart Bray is a working makeup FX artist with many years experienc. Credits include 'Saving Private Ryan', 'Shaun of the Dead', 'Dr Who' and more recently 'Game of Thrones'. If you have any FX questions you would like to see made into a featured blog post, then get in touch: stuartandtodd@gmail.com
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Now displaying: 2023
Dec 29, 2023

Our trip down to Falmouth Uni preceded The Prosthetics Event 2023. It was a great trip, and so nice to see the work being done by students there and talk shop.

As always, we have a rough idea about what we want to talk about, but it's always led by the feeling in the room at the time, questions that come up and current events within the group .

We spoke for so long in a packed room using a single recorder, so the sound is a little different from our usual close microphone stuff.

It went on for nearly three hours, and fell into two distinct sections - the first half we present here.

The second part we shall release soon, and was when Neill Gorton arrived after just having beaten Covid again. Present were lecturers and all-round good eggs Brad Greenwood and Duncan Cameron, plus a room crammed with the students from the Prosthetic Effects MA who we had come to see.

Thanks to Duncan Cameron for his awesome sketches which feature in the episode art of parts 1 and 2. Check his work out on Insta @brokensharkcage.

Thanks for listening! Incidentally, the 'Hi, welcome to passes with bits of brother' bit comes from an automated transcript attempt in Word of the near 3 hour recording. Needless to say,I don't think we will be using that as a way to pull text from audio!

More notes on the blog post found at

https://battleswithbitsofrubber.com/falmouthp1

Nov 28, 2023
 
Makeup artists typically like makeup. It is a tactile medium, and they enjoy products, how they feel and smell and respond to brushes and pressure. 
 
Making prosthetics similarly has its tactile qualities, and it is hard to separate these sensations from the very nature of the joy in the work.
 
It is little wonder then that this same group of people may not have developed an extensive love of digital versions of the same work.
 
Doing a digital makeup effect in Photoshop requires the makeup artist's mindset but somehow it is not the same thing, and I think this reluctance to do digital work can put the makeup community at a disadvantage. 

The digital ship has definitely sailed, but the opportunity to join the crew is always open. This is our attempt at starting a wider conversation within the makeup industry regarding digital tools in the workshop.

Check out the extensive notes available on the blog post that corresponds with this episode.
 
https://battleswithbitsofrubber.com/
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