Hello Everyone,

I started doing Special Make Up FX at the age of Ten (I am 42 now). As a very young child I was changing my GI-Joe into Frankenstein's Monster and accident victims with my Dad's Bondo, or my Silly Putty. After watching Planet of the Apes and a behind the scenes segment on Johnny Chambers (Make Up Artist responsible for those fantastic apes designs) in 1974, I made my first mask: it was an ape of course.

By the age of 17, I got my first 'professional' job working on a local TV Commercial, then a real cheap low budget horror film in Florida. All this was going on in 1980 and 81. At the same time just down the road in a small little town called Morristown TN, some young guys were making a low budget horror film. My Dad had heard about it threw some Hunting and Fishing buddy's from down that way. One Saturday we loaded up the Truck and drove the 50 minutes or so to Morristown to see if this band of film makers could use a young aspiring make up fx artist. We got as far as the property line, where we explained why we there and the young gentleman, was quiet nice, but asked us to leave. I was heart broken, but not as heart broken as I would become a few years later when the movie became such a cult classic, a horror icon named "The Evil Dead". So close, but so far away!

Growing up in a 50 thousand peep' east Tennessee town, wanting to become a Special FX Make Up FX Artist was like living in Pompeii and wanting to be the Valcano cleaner (not quite understood). The people in my little town saw great success in working your life away in the Tennessee Eastman Kodak plant, not making monsters. At that time there were only a few books out on the subject. Richard Corson's 'Stage Make Up' and 'Dick Smith's Do-It-Yourself Monster Makeup' book. The Internet did not exist, this art was almost a secret like a Masonary ritual.

During this time I discovered a magazine or two that pulled me out of the woods. There was a more Sci-Fi based mag call ' Starlog', and the Holy Grail......"Fangoria", which catered to the horror genre. Backthen Fango had more articles that described how make up FX were done, alot less "Who stronger, Freddy or Jason?" stuff. I soon discovered make up FX greats like Rick Baker,Stan Winston, Craig Reardon and a slew of others. As a couple of years rolled by, it seemed as if you were anyone in the make up FX bizz you were in Fangoria from time to time. That 'standard' seemed to last up into the mid 90's. So it was always me and my Fangoria Pen Pals Rich Mayberry, Chet Zar and Dave Snyder dream to have our work with in the covers of this magazine. We know that we had made it when we finally got in there.

As the see-saw popularity of horror films went up in the 80's and dow in the 90's, so did the coverage on make up FX artists. With the resurrection of the horror films, and more articles on such great FX guys as Greg, Bob and Howard of KNB, David Leroy Anderson, Rick Baker and many more started gracing the pages again. So I started to feel that is some validity to FX guys getting there name in there.  Of course the name David Leroy
Anderson, KNB or Rick Baker has validity magazone or not. 

Two years a go I was the make up FX designer and artist on a low budget Inddie film called "Dark Remains" by a super talented writer..director Brian Avenet' Bradley. Up to date the make up FX I did on the film are some of my favorites.

This Sunday Me and my lovely wife Susana stopped by Barnes and Nobles for a coffee. I went to the magazine section to see if the new "Make Up Artist Magazine" was out, it was so I nabbed it up. I picked up the new Fangoria, issue 258. I flipped threw the pages checking out an article about the new Saw film. I flipped more pages and there it was....Her name is Rachel Rawlings, She was "the hot naked ghost" as us guys called her on set. I had designed an all silicone prosthetic make up to transfer her into a ghost like entity. My heart sank, my work had made it in the magazine after twenty five years of "grow up", "get a real job", "are you some kind of freak" comments, after working on some very no-name almost no-pay films. This was the first page of the article, I flipped the page, there were three other photos of my make ups! The article mentioned me, Brian complimented my work and even told how I "the professional" put a latex bladder on an actress without knowing she was alergic to latex, and how I named a silicone dummy of a friend of mine named 'Bobby', "Well hung Bobby"....the character in the film committed suicide by hanging himself. This was great!

I finally was in there, true it was not some big article just about me and my work, but the named that I always hated growing up 'Toby' (Dogs Name) was staring me in the face. My wife was looking, reading with me, I had tears in my eyes from the excitement. After all these years of waiting to be mentioned in Fango, I realized what was even better: I have a wife that was proud of my little acomplishment, she was just as excited as me. When I was learning how to sculpt and make molds, she was just a little girl playing on the beach in Portugal, but she was so proud of me, and that meant everything.

It was when I saw how here face glowed, how happy she was, I realized that I had already made it, I was already a success in her eyes. That moment was every bit as good as the first time I met my Idle Dick Smith, or when I worked at Mark Shostrom's shop and Greg Nicotero and Bob Kurtzman would let me crash at there place and we would watch movies for the weekend.

This past Sunday was a great day, I just wanted to share the fact that one of my little dreams came true, and another one has been setting in front of me for the past three years, my wife Susana.

I hope this has made you think about those silly little dreams that you keep deep inside. Life is so damn short, if you got one, go for it!  I probably never will smudge an Oscar trophey with my finger prints, but I made it to Fango and it felt good...LOL.

Thanks to so many of you guys and gals on the "Space" that I am getting aquatinted with, especially in the make upFX category. I enjoy the emails and Blogs!

Thanks for reading.

Peace

Toby