This interview was conducted during a to LA in 2001 at the home of Tom McLaughlin.
aRvin: Would you like to talk about some of your recent projects?
Steve: For the past couple of years I've done a lot of work for Rick Baker. I worked on the "Grinch" (that was one of the first ones that I did with him) and then we pretty much went right into "Planet of the Apes" and then Men in Black 2, (which was) the last think I just finished up with him. It's still shooting right now, but its winding down. In between those I usually freelance, and day check on shows like "Angel", and "Buffy." I did a project recently with Kevin Haney for a TV show called "My Wife and Kids" which we did an entire family of fat makeup's like the "Klumps" I guess you could say for Damon Wayons, and his TV family.
aRvin: That sounds cool. Did you want to talk a bit further about what you did for those projects?
Steve: Sure! On "Grinch" and "Apes" I worked both in the lab, at Bricks, and then went to set with the projects. In the lab I mainly stayed in the mold shop, and head casting was my main job there. On Apes it was pretty much just head casts, and we had something like 40 o5 50 guys come through there for head casts. So it was an every day, two people a day constant thing. So... I got pretty good at head casts! But on MIB I actually was still working on "Apes" (we were still shooting while they were doing the lab work for "MIB") so I wasn't able to go back and work at the lab. So I just stuck with "Apes" until it wrapped, and then went right into some MIB work on set.
aRvin: Did you do the makeup with Kevin Haney after that?
Steve: I went in with Kevin, and did headrests on all of the actors which included Damon Wayons, and the three actors who played his children. Including a six year old, which was interesting. But she was great. She actually sat through a silicone head cast, and sat through the makeup and everything as well. So I did that, did a little bit of lab work for him, (setting up his cores, and getting the initial jump while he was sculpting all of the makeup's. Then he finished the makeup's., molded them himself and then I went to set with him to apply them.
aRvin: Which silicone did you use for the headrests?
Steve: We used Ply-O-Life for them, and we got the system down pretty good. Kevin and I hadn't done a head cast together until this project, so the first one is a little "getting used to who does what" and all of that. By the last one we were just banging them out. We had to do all four in one day. That was a little difficult. But what was nice was unlike alginate, you didn't have to pour it up. You could just do the cast, set it aside and go on to the next person. So that was a huge time saver, including the fact that there is your master mold. So now you can reproduce your hydrocals, or what ever you are going to sculpt on, and your cores and parts out of that mold. I think in the long run its an expense saver. Its a little more expensive initially, for the silicone instead of the alginate. But in the long run you save both time and money with it.
Tom: Do you re-enforce it with any cloth as you go?
Steve: On some parts... on some of the full heads we were re-enforcing down the back with cheese cloth sandwiched between a couple of layers...
Tom: That's right! it will stick to its self, and you don't need a bonder.
Steve: Exactly. We'd do it in two coats. So the first coat would be the natural polyceloxane color, and then we'd tint it so we could see where we were putting on the second coat, and make sure we didn't go over. I just tinted it with GM Foam tints. For that particular project we did 3/4 (casts) so we really didn't have a need to cut up the back of a full head or anything. So we didn't put any re-enforcement at all. Its durable enough that it withstood the removal as well casting 3 or 4 heads out of each cast.
aRvin: I've actually found from using Ply-o-life that it tears quite easily.
Steve: If it gets a tear, its going to run. Yeah, totally. I think what we were doing on this, on our second pass... we put a really nice thick bead around the edge, so that helped us as far as the strength. But yeah, on one of the casts the last head we pulled out tore it. We could have used a little something in there but it was one of those other things too where you could have taken the time to put it in. So we figured we were under such a time constraint that we were just jamming through with the minimal amount of extraneous steps, ya know? But it worked out pretty well and everybody survived...
aRvin: What were the final make up cast in?
Steve: They were foam. I'm not sure what foam he runs. But basically he did the project from headcast to the day we applied in 8 days.
aRvin: Wow!
Steve: It was 4 makeup's. Full fat faces. Some had back of the neck appliances.
(At this point Tom, Megan and I all simultaneously chime in with "wow's")
Steve: It was shot in one day. I was over at Disney so it was a nice quick TV show shoot. Half of the people we were making up were minors so they could only have them for a certain amount of hours. So that was nice too. We got a nice early day.
(We all laugh at that)
Steve: Make them up, shoot it, and get out of there!
aRvin: To get a bit of your history, who were some of your biggest influences? Not necessarily from the effects makeup world, but music or fine artists that made an impact on your work...
Steve: Actually, my dad is a really talented artist. He doesn't do this profession at all, but growing up he was always painting something, or sculpting. He had an art background. He went to an art college in Massachusetts, where I was born... but he was an extremely talented artist, and just did it as a hobby. But I definitely picked up a lot from him. He knew what clays to buy, stuff like that. It was nice to have that influence in the house. But from the business definitely Dick Smith, Rick Baker... the heavy hitters... Stuart Freebourne, and Chris Tucker... amazing stuff. The same main group that a lot of people got their interest. But John Chambers definitely.. Its kinda cool to talk to some of those guys, and work with them... its like they are just normal guys, ya know? Just really super talented.
aRvin: who would you say in an influence on you now versus then?
Steve: I think now I just see a lot of people that I work with, different makeup artists.. People like Joel Harlow, Will Huff, and those guys who in the same age range as I am, and we got into the union and the business in similar time frames. A lot of those guys are just amazing. Joel is just one of the most talented artists out there. So I like to pick his brain and watch his work, and steal from it.
(Everybody laughs)
aRvin: I'd like to talk about is the GFA system that you came up with, Was it something that you came up with on a job, or more tinkering on your own time?
Steve: More tinkering. It was an off shoot of.. Well years ago I was working a lot more with platinums, and medical grade. Those are great, and they have their place, but the material is so expensive, and of course platinum is so difficult to work with on many levels, it just seemed that tin was the logical way to go. A couple years ago I started more into tin silicone direction, and the last thing I did platinum was the Hunch back back at the trade show a couple years ago. And that was... it worked out but it had its bad points. And not to mention the expense alone of the materials. At that point, it was kind of a turning point for me to say "OK, maybe I should go more into a tin cure direction." So this was more of just a tinkering thing. I haven't had a project that I've used it on, extensively. I've made a few pieces, for people here and there just to try out, but its not something that I've fully run with on a show yet. I've of course had 3 or 4 shows that have come up and I've bid on them, and put this into the bid, and was ready to do a great age makeup, and then the show falls through.So its like "OK, try that again next show. "
aRvin: The interesting thing about the appliance system is that you are using a latex as the encapsulant.
Steve: Yeah. Actually the latex I'm using is deviant. I picked up a jar of it at that trade show when I did the hunchback, because I notices that the slab that they had was pretty thick, it was probably close to an 1/8th of an inch thick and you could still see through it... You could READ through it. Now THAT'S a clear latex. I hadn't seen that before. So futzed around with that, and it actually turned out to be a lot stronger then any of the balloon rubbers, or casting latex's, which are so full of fillers. This was a really clean grade latex. Its super strong, and I actually make bald caps out of it too.
aRvin: so it actually is a natural rubber, its not synthetic?
Steve: Right. Like I said, the clarity of it... I'm really only putting in 2 coats on either side of the piece, to encapsulate it. At that minimal thickness its very clear. Any yellowing that may occur is negligible.
aRvin: From what I can see here you are using XT-298 (from circle k-products) as the gel. How much are you plasticizing that ?
Steve:
Well.. for a softer gel the most I have gone is 120% with the 200 fluid.
Much further then that and it doesn't have great memory, and it can hold
impressions, and not be as bouncy as I'd like. At that rate of plasticizer
too it has a nice consistency to flow into a syringe, and inject easily.
Where as the 289 straight out of the jar is pretty thick. Its like honey...
thick honey. Its kinda tough to work with as is, but you can cut back
on the 120% or the 120 parts to 100 silicone and get a firmer gel.
--
Steve:
This was a dual purpose to try out both platinum and tin small pieces
to see how they compared against each other. The upper lip is tin, and
the eye is platinum. They went down very similarly as far as what you
can do with it. Tom:
What did you use for the sheen? Steve:
KY Jelly. I think at the time I used Reel Creation colors. aRvin:
Did you find any differences in gluing down? Did you have to use different
adhesives? Steve:
Both I went with Telesis glues, I think in removal the lip (tin) stuck
on lot better. Platinum, you're putting a silicone skin over a silicone
gel, and inherently, silicone doesn't want to glue to anything. You can
trick it, you can mess with the components. I used to load up skin with
Telesis glue to have a sticky skin, or I'd flock the molds so that when
you take the piece out you have a fuzzy back piece. You can try to manipulate
the material that way, but inevitably, you're still trying to glue silicone.
That becomes problematic. Too much movement, and it creeps like a vinyl
bald cap would. --
aRvin:
So lets start with a breakdown of the old age makeup Steve:
That was actually a platinum system. The one that I was using for the
hunchback. Which is materials from Factor 2- Dow Corning 527 as a gel,
and 6640 silicone dispersion as the skin. And it breaks down into a full
face piece. Lips are separate, nose is separate, eye bags and eye lids
are separate and the ears are separate. Tom:
the jowls are Steve:
It was all a full face missing the plug in little pieces. Tom:
Just the face and neck area? Steve:
Mm-hmm, all one piece. Which is fun to put on. aRvin:
What did you use to paint it? Steve:
That was actually the Shinitsu KE-45T silicone caulking thinned with d-Limonene
but now I'm more partial to OS-10 by Dow Corning. Tom:
It smells a lot better! (degenerates
into a OSX conversation. Damn Macintosh geeks.) Steve:
Using that as a paint base, the caulking, and then pre-thin it - a trick
I learned from Mr. McLaughlin - and I've been accustomed to using Crayola
powdered paints, the tempera, as my pigments. It pigments silicone, latex,
plaster, and it's so cheap, it's like four bucks a pound. So I've
used that as a base, and mix that in with caulking and paint with it.
aRvin:
So, this makeup was extrinsically painted? Steve:
Right, a lot of people like to put flocking and stuff in. One thing with
the gel, I don't like to put flocking in just because sometimes it'll
plug up the injecting and then you've got a clump of flock in there. But,
I end up painting so much on the outside anyways, that I usually lose
any kind of flocking that I've put into it. So I've kinda come around
to my system of just doing it extrinsically. With the tin system it's
nice because you can paint it with the more traditional tattoo colors. Tom:
Right, because it has a skin of latex. How
is it with glue? Steve:
It glues so good! So well, sorry. I sound like a rube... I had a piece
that sat around for four months. I cleaned off the oil that had leeched
through (because no matter what people say, no matter what you put on
as a skin, something's going to leech through.) aRvin:
So in using the latex as an encapsulant can you use some of the premade
Pax colors? Steve:
I haven't tried Pax necessarily but I kinda kinda more into the Mike Davey
paints, and I was using [Skin] Illustrator for a while but I got more
into the Davey direction. He's got a really good line of 52 colors in
liquid and palette form now. It's great. He's really making some strides
with that. What's nice is that you can get in there with the alcohol and
do nice washes and fine spots, and moles and everything. I think Pax might
get a little flaky on something that flexible. I'd lean more towards the
tattoo, but it's definitely preference with what works for you. -- aRvin:
the last make-up we have here is...hmm..I can't see any edges. (Laughter
from all) Steve:
(laughs) It's actually a full nose, and it's a tin piece. Tom:
The color is fine.. Steve:
I like to shoot things outdoors, you definitely get the harshest light
that way. Tom:
Bridge or the tip? Are the nostrils included? Steve:
Basically it runs across the bridge down the sides, rides the nostril
and goes down the front. Her nostrils are real. It's the whole top side
of the nose. aRvin:
What type of coloration is this? Steve:
It was all Mike Davey. I don't think I pre-painted at all. I usually just
try to tint the gel. With these particular make-ups I tinted the gel to
the lightest shade on the actor and then painted down from there. It's
much easier to do it that way for me. A lot of people like to do dark
and then highlight on top, but I think that gets chalky on silicone, and
it starts to look a little phony. Tom:
Was she pleased with her new nose? Steve:
Yeah, as pleased as you can be with a big honker (laughter
from all) 
With all these pieces though, you really cant do a lot with sweat.
I know people who would Pax the actor before putting the piece down or
put a layer of Pros-Aide down or seal their skin with a plastic sealer.
You can inhibit the sweat and keep the piece from falling off that way.
Still, sweat's gotta go somewhere. That's really the inherent problem
in dealing with these types of make-ups is dealing with that.
I always look at it like per job, try to address it exactly: are
we going to shoot indoors or outdoors? Are we going to be in a controlled
environment where we can control the atmosphere and keep the actor cool
enough to not sweat. In Planet of the Apes, they originally talked about
doing silicone apes, and they did some tests, and they looked great, but
then we shot in five different locations - Hawaii, down in the lava rocks;
we shot in the desert - and I don't think a silicone make-up would have
held up. I think through what these actors did and went through that it
would have been a lot more problematic for that type of make-up. I like
to try to see what the project entails before I decide on whether to go
with silicone or not. 
There's a step in this process where you put down the latex skin,
spray the caulking behind that, and close the mold. The caulking coat
serves two purposes: it helps the gel adhere (because the gel's not going
to adhere to just the latex, there'd still be some peeling) and it definitely
helps a bond there, as well as helps the oil from migrating as quickly.
But yeah, I took a piece that sat around for four months, cleaned
the back of with some acetone, and got all the residual oil off, and still
was able to glue it and it stuck like gangbusters. It's nice because you're
basically just gluing latex. I was using Telesis glue. I tried a couple
tests with Pros-Aide, and wasn't too hip to that. It definitely was easier
to peel off than the Telesis. The solvent in Telesis just bit into the
rubber a little better. The 5 and the 4 [Telesis grades] both seemed equal
in their glue abilities. I'm sure that at some point you won't be able
to glue it, you know, 8 months, whatever, but short term, and especially
for film you're usually banging out pieces a week before anyways. I think
it's definitely viable.
