Cliff Wallace : special effects artist and creature creator

Special Effects Artist Cliff Wallace

By J. Jekyll
August 2009
Goremaster.com

Mr. Wallace runs Creature Effects, a special effects house that creates prothetics, life like heads and bodies and creatures for film and television. Mr. Wallace shares his experience in the industry and offers some advice for beginners interested in this field.

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GM: When did you make your decision to enter the field?

CW: I can pinpoint it exactly; it was seeing "The Howling" in 1981. The transformation stuff just blew me away. I really started to try and find out as much as I could about makeup effects from that point onwards.

GM: What or who inspired you to start? Who was your influence?

CW: I'd write to whoever was chiefing makeup effects jobs in the UK and try and get to visit them. The first people who showed any interest were Rick Baker who was in the UK working on "Greystoke", and Chris Tucker who was shooting "Company of Wolves".

GM: Favorite early special effects memory – movie scene – book – TV show?

CW: The TV show "Thunderbirds" had a huge influence on me. The effects work was streets ahead of anything else on TV. I love all the Gerry Anderson shows. Ray Harryhausen of course, particularly the Jason and Sinbad movies. Then later the movies that ITV used to screen on Friday nights in their "Appointment with Fear" programmes. These were usually, Hammer, Tigon or Amicus movies, but also a lot of the classic Universal stuff...

GM: What are your top five special effects movies?

CW: My favourite effects movies aren't really the ones that have been the most influential to me design wise. The creatures that have really influenced me would be; "The Creature from the Black Lagoon," the Crane Zoanoid from "Guyver Dark Hero", Pumpkinhead's a great looking creature. The Alien of course, also the second stage Guild Navigator that Chris Tucker did for Dune.

GM: What is your favorite makeup special effects scene from a movie? (it doesn’t have to be from one of your movies)

CW: The Norris scene from Carpenter's "The Thing" is still tops for me; it’s put together so well and builds so intensely,

GM: Who is your favorite special effects person?

CW: Rob Bottin had such an incredible run of films, starting with "The Howling" in very quick succession you had "The Thing", "Legend" "Robocop" Inner Space" "Explorers" - all of them with stuff that are really landmark-iconic creations. I have loads of other favourites of course, Rick baker, Dick Smith, Steve Johnson, Stan Winston, Chris Tucker and Stuart Freeborn in the UK.

GM: How did you get started working in the Special Effects industry?

CW: I served a bedroom apprenticeship really, I'm pretty much self taught, I read everything I could about effects and wrote to as many practicing effects artists as I could. I spent a good three or four years making stuff in my bedroom and taking photos of it before anyone started looking at me seriously. There just wasn't the resources there are today, no schools or websites, there was the Corson book "Stage Makeup", Famous Monsters and Fangoria when you could get them that was pretty much it.

I started to make latex masks and a friend of mine used to sell them from his market stall in Covent Garden. One day a researcher from a kids TV show saw them and invited me on a kids TV show to talk about my rather strange little hobby. A couple of guys who were working on the movie "Rawhead Rex" saw the show and gave me a job as a runner at their shop.

Alien Child

GM: Whose current work do you admire?

CW: Steve Wang's design style has been hugely influential on me, I guess the first thing that really registered with me was the Gill Man suit from "Monster Squad" as I've mentioned I'm a huge Creature fan, and I love suits. And of course Steve changed the way creatures were painted forever with the scheme he came up with for "Predator". Another huge influence is Jordu Schell; his sculptural style is becoming very pervasive. You can see its influence today in the work of so many artists, myself included. Design wise, Brom and Wayne Barlowe are having a huge influence on the look of creature design, Chet Zar too. The company who I really admire right now is Spectral Motion who I worked with fairly closely on Hellboy 2. There’s a lot of really talented artists out there and Spectral seem to have the pick of them.

GM: How have you gotten work in the industry?

CW: Since forming "Creature Effects" in 1992 the work has pretty much come to us, although sometimes not as regularly as I'd like. It’s a tough job making a living out of effects in the UK and I think keeping the company running and being able to keep a lot of the talented people who work in effects in the UK employed is my proudest achievement. For the last four years I've run Creature Effects pretty much on my own which has meant that if I want to go off and freelance on other projects I can, which works really well for me.

GM: What was your toughest job?

CW: The toughest job was a promo for Massive Attack we did. Teardrop featured a baby in a womb lip synching the song- it was the only thing in the video and was a real technical challenge. It worked out alright in the end and the promo won loads of awards but it came close to being a real abortion.

GM: What was your favorite job?

CW: Favourite job's easy- "Hellraiser" was my first real movie and the first time I got to sculpt main characters. Bob Keen assembled a bunch of guys and championed enthusiasm over
experience and just let us run with it. I'm still very proud of the work we did in it, and it was great to work with Clive Barker who was just on fire at the time. In later years, 28 Days Later and Hellboy 2 were great projects to have worked on, and Blackhawk Down and Kingdom of Heaven were good experiences. I think Ridley Scott's the best director the UK has ever produced.

Hellraiser

GM: How do you pick out materials to use for a project? Do you make your own? Are there any brands that you recommend?

CW: The materials for a job pretty much pick themselves. You look at what the effect has to achieve and pick them accordingly. What distresses me greatly is people using materials just because they are currently "in". The number of students producing "inappropriate" silicone appliance makeups is huge. It's not about the material its what you can do with it that counts. Something that starts life as a bad sculpture isn't going to get any better because of the material that you use.

GM: Are there any new breakthroughs or ideas in the industry that excite you?

CW: The whole use of silicone as a material for prosthetics and fake bodies really came about because of the impact of CG. There suddenly became a need to raise the game and make stuff that looked good to the eye as well as good on film. I think we were one of the first companies, in Europe certainly, to go down the translucent material route and it has served us well, but I don’t think it’s absolutely the right material for every job. Foam and gelatin still have their place.

Reaper
Reaper

GM: What is a current project you are working on? Or what project are you excited about?

CW: I'm currently working on Clash of the Titans, a remake of the last movie to feature Harryhausen effects. There is no stop motion this time, the creatures are being realized through CGI, prosthetics and animatronics. I and many of the guys who regularly work at Creature Effects are working for Neil Corbould Special Effects on a number of animatronic creations. It feels a little strange to be working on a project that is so synonymous with Harryhausen.

GM: Do you have advice for a beginner or someone just getting started in the business?

CW: I’m constantly surprised at the number of beginners who think they have to be taught how to do this, there’s so much information out there. You can actually teach yourself. You don’t need to spend thousands of pounds going to a school. You don’t need any academic qualifications. A portfolio will get you work. My best advice on folios is don’t put anything in there that you have to apologize for. It should be absolutely the best work that you can do. People tend to think they need loads of stuff in their folios, but they don’t. A lot of student turn up with dozens of photos but are only really proud of two or three pieces. I usually suggest that they take all the other photos out because if the bad work outweighs the good, people only tend to remember the bad stuff.. It’s all about giving yourself the best chance really.

GM: What was the best advice/training you ever received?

CW: Someone recommended I went to an evening class to do figurative sculpture when I first started getting interested in effects work. It was the best advice I was ever given. I had no formal art training and wasn't very disciplined about sculpture, but having to go somewhere once a week and look very intently at the human body, and concentrate on form and anatomy was invaluable to me,

GM: How do you envision the future of makeup special effects – do you think that CGI is hurting the industry?

CW: CGI has harmed the industry without a doubt , it has changed it immeasurably and will continue to do so in the future, its a subject I return to time and time again in the column I write for Make Up Artist Magazine. I don’t think makeup effects will disappear completely but I can see the appeal for both producers and actors of CG over prosthetics. At the moment the best approach is a combination of the two. Like makeup effects CG is a tool to help tell the story, I do not think it's always the best tool ,but it is the brightest, shiniest tool in the box right now. Thankfully there are a lot of directors out there who still like to use the old tools as well as the bright shiny ones, and a lot of what makeup effects are about right now, and will continue to be in the future is reminding both directors, and audiences too that although both tools can do a lot of the same jobs, there remain some things that one tool can do just as well, if not better...For the time being at least.

http://www.creature-effects.com/

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