Zombies

Halloween last night. People were grossing out left right and centre at my gnarly wounds and sadly I couldn't keep my mouth shut about how I made them. I figured I would write into the ether and announce that this was my idea first. MINE!

Nature has this awesome ability to look gruesome. So many people completely overlook the local deli in favour of the very packed out, very cheaply made emporium. In lieu of this fact, I decided against my beloved Geoffs and went to the supermarket.

With salami originally in mind, I went to the deli section and my eyes set upon the sundried tomatoes. Brilliant. The perfect red, the perfect browns, and flicked with seeds the same colour as tasty little pustules. I bought some salami too, but cast it aside when I got home.

I encountered a few problems.

1) The oil.
Spirit gum is the best stuff for sticking things to your skin. It's strong and used a lot in LARP so it should be fairly harmless. I would suggest erring away from using it around the eyes as I did for although I had a pad over my eyes, the fumes still made them sting a bit. Probably not the best move.
The oil meant that the spirit gum was less adhesive, and that's a feat. So I paper towelled them and also drowned them for a few seconds in lemon juice to break it down. I didn't want to reconstitute them, so just a few seconds did the trick. At your deli, dont get the ones sunk in oil at the bottom. And don't go for the bottled ones - they would be even more difficult to get on as they've been sitting in the stuff for ages.
I will get back to you on methods to de-oil tomatoes. It needs more experimentation. It was still on by the end of the night, but it wouldn't have lasted till dawn.

2) The smell.
If there was one thing that would have given it away, it would be the smell. Walking in reeking of salami and sundried tomatoes is poor form. It deducts from the overall effect. The lemon juice helped with removal of smell a little bit, but not as much as I would have liked as little smell as possible.
Again, I will get back to you.

The trick to get the tomatoes to look less like tomatoes is the blending effects. Get some brown face paint and blend the sides into your face to give a lovely infected look. I made the mistake of doing this after I applied the sundried tomatoes, so when they came loose there is a white gap. I would imagine the downside to applying a base colour is that the spirit gum would be even less effective.

(I did have, but) You don't need a white base to the face. A realistic zombie look only needs some darkening around the upper lid of the eye, right to the eyebrow, a little where the nose meets the brow and then under the cheekbones. It's more subtle, so when people look at you, the shock comes quicker.

One last note. Choose your colours to match your colouring. I used dark browns and reds as I have ginger hair. Someone with darker hair could use a lot more blues and greens in the face to give a healthy, developed rot. If you're blonder, you can go yellow for a more infected, or pussy sort of look.

Laters peeps.
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