Effects Legend Greg Nicotero Offers Advice to Budding Effects Artists

Greg Nicotero, the man behind the special makeup effects of films such as Day of the Dead, Scream and Minority Report, was in town  at the weekend for the first London based Walker Stalker Convention. The convention celebrates all things The Walking Dead and featured appearances from several key cast members along with Nicotero, who not only provides makeup effects for the hordes of walkers, but also acts as producer and director.

During the weekend we took the opportunity to grab a few moments with the makeup guru. His makeup credits on imdb list over 160 projects making him one of the people that aspiring special effects makeup artists look to for inspiration. From speaking to Nicotero he seems more than willing to help ‘pay it forwards’ and give the future generation advice on how to achieve their best work. Here’s what he had to say.

What advice can you give to anyone wanting to build up their special effects makeup work?

When I was young I had to scourer through magazines to find pictures of materials. I would look at the work benches in the back of the photos and see what materials they had. Now you can find anything you need on the internet. In terms of watching tutorials, seeing different materials people use.

The biggest piece of advice I can say is take really good pictures of all of your make-ups. Don’t get too too much blood on them because blood a lot of time obscures the work. A lot of times people do a lot of work and as soon as they dump a ton of blood on it it obscures everything. Just take really good pictures, even if you’re a sculptor and you’re not confident making moulds of your sculptures just take pictures. Sometimes just painting a clay head might help show the level of your artistic abilities.

Greg Nicotero at Walker Stalker Convention London

The Walking Dead seems to have brought practical effects back to the masses, what’s your take on it?

I tell you The Walking Dead has really invigorated special effects make-up for an entire new generation. When I was young, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old that was the late seventies and you had Dawn of the Dead, An American Werewolf in London, The Howling and The Thing.  There was this explosion of special makeup effects. Many effects artists today can track back that they entered the industry because of an interest in that peak of movies.

For now you have The Walking Dead. I’m on Instagram, I have half a million followers, I would say that 60-70% of them are young kids who want to get into special effects. I’m always being asked for some tips and ‘what’s the best way to this?’ and ‘how do we do that?’ It’s really exciting for me to be able pay it forward.

Catch Greg’s work on The Walking Dead every Monday at 9pm on Fox.