Gino Acevedo Braves Goremaster's Lair: The Weta Workshop will Never be the Same
By J.M.Jeffrey
August 2007
Goremaster.com
Award winning Senior Visual Effects Prosthetics Supervisor and Visual Creature Effects Art Director, Gino Acevedo, at WETA Workshop in New Zealand took some time out of his busy schedule to talk about his impressive Special Effects Makeup/Prosthetics career spanning over 20 years. Mr. Acevedo has worked on such monumental films as Men in Black, Independence Day, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and King Kong just to name a few! He talks to Goremaster about getting his start in the industry and offers some advice for new artists hoping to break into field of makeup special effects!
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GM: When did you make the decision to enter the field?
Professionally I did it when I was working for a Halloween company in Phoenix, AZ, I was 18. I started with them after high school and went there to design the Halloween masks.
I was always interested in the makeup effects and through the company I met a friend, Barry Koper, who was a well known makeup artist in Los Angeles, CA. He used to come over to Phoenix twice a year to do the photo shoot for the catalog for the company.
Mr. Larry Liff, owned the Halloween company, and Barry Koper were old friends, so Barry would come over for the photo shoots and would do all the special makeup for the catalog photos. Barry kind of took me under his wing and he was taught by John Chambers. John Chambers was a great makeup artist who passed away recently, unfortunately, but he is the one who did the makeups for the original Planet of the Apes (1968). Planet of the Apes was one of the movies that changed my whole life when I saw it… the original one. I saw a “making of” documentary [Planet of the Apes] and saw John Chambers making up all the apes and stuff and it was probably at that point that I decided that’s what I want to do. It’s funny, because a lot of makeup artists basically have the same story, that it was Planet of Apes that basically changed their life!
GM: Who inspired you to start? Who was your influence?
Jack Pierce and John Chambers really. Jack Pierce of course did all the Frankenstein (1931), the Mummy (1932) [original Universal monster movie makeups]. So, I guess I really wanted to get into it quite early on, but didn’t know how it could ever possibly happen. Until I started with the Halloween company and that just really opened all the doors for me.
GM: What is a favorite early Special Effects Makeup memory?
One of my favorite creatures has been The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). I remember seeing that as a kid and just loving that. And even Frankenstein, because I’ve got some drawings [of Frankenstein] that my mom had saved when I was a little kid probably 6 or 7 years old.
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