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Scenic

The Pop-Out cake I co-designed & constructed for Stacy London to jump out of on the 'In Knead of Style' episode of What Not to Wear on TLC stands as my most prominent scenic work to date. The cake was designed, constructed, and delivered in a 12 hour time frame as had to be called in last-minute when the producer's previously purchased cake was found unusable. On the other side of things, Dracula: The Musical? stands as my largest and most realistically detailed design & construction project to date. When an audience member asks where they can purchase the wallpaper only to find out that the pattern was stenciled in, your heart just warms that little bit more. I've worked extensively with digital design programs such as SketchUp and Photoshop to achieve my desired results as well as having a workable knowledge of AutoCAD for all necessary blueprint work. When given open artistic freedom for designing, I am truly in my prime.

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Makeup FX

Makeup and special effects may be the latest skill to officially make it's way into my repertoire, but it is far from a new subject to me. I started doing my own Halloween makeup somewhere around the age of 9, and have been improving since. I began to take the art of makeup fx seriously when I jumped into the roll for Fright Haven Haunted House in 2008. Befriending Ezia Leech, an amazing local makeup artist who was also working the haunt, I was invited in the summer of 2009 to train with the world renowned makeup & effects artists The Wolfe Brothers (now Evil Twin FX). The Wolfes gave me a whole new appreciation for the discipline, took my skills to a new level, and pushed my expectations of what is possible. I've worked with various types of makeup, latex, silicone, paper products, cotton, various fake blood formulas, prosthetics, contact lenses, rock salt, etc. I've worked with ages ranging from 12 to 50+ on projects ranging from films to theatre to photo shoots.

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Special FX

Fake hands caught in a closing car door? Geysers of fake blood? What about limbs amputated via lawn mower? I've been asked to design some far-out effects, few if any of which could be called 'standard'. Creating elegant solutions to problems for which there is no established method is something I truly delight in. My most widely distributed work to date would the that of the dark comedy Leave Day, written and directed by Sean Nalaboff and produced by Peephole Productions in association with Black Hole Films. The film had it's east coast premier at Tribeca Cinemas in NYC, it's west coast premier at El Cid in LA, and was shown at both the 2010 Silk City Flick Fest in Hartford, CT and the 2010 Williamsburg Independent Film Festival in Williamsburg, NY. My work for the film included creating a fake dead body out of expanding foam that was then wrapped in trash bags as well as a ballistics gel fake hand to be slammed in the trunk of a car. Unfortunately the hand was cut from the final film, but the body played quite well while saving the actors from having to lift more than 10 lbs. at a time.

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Mask

Unlike many others out there, I don't subscribe to one particular method of maskmaking. I have used an incredible variety of materials in my designs, including: latex, neoprene, burlap, muslin, cheesecloth, sharkstooth scrim, many varieties of different foams, paper products, cotton, various metals, leather, acrylic, paper-mâché, etc. In the various design processes I've utilized over the years, I've made full & partial plaster head casts of numerous people, used clay & plaster casting techniques quite extensively, and created masks that can actually double as prosthetics. My highest profile project to date, was a terrifying burlap mask that I created for the 2009 Halloween episode of Connecticut Style on WTNH News Channel 8 featuring Sonia Baghdady and Desiree Fontaine. Following that I was asked by Critical Coatings (a new and quit excellent neoprene supplier) to test out a custom neoprene blend for possible use in my "fitted sock" style masks. More recently I completed a training seminar with the Wolfe brothers strengthening many skills I already had and introducing me to a few new design concepts.

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Costume

Most of the time when you see "costuming" in someone's resume or portfolio you think frills, funny hats, and fabrics chosen to be absolutely period perfect. That is not the type of costuming I do. Though I've been known to whip up the occasional cowl, cape, or top hat to complete a look, my main costuming focus is that of the large and unusual. Personal Halloween costumes notwithstanding, the Mr. Stay Puft costume has been my most popular and most requested to date. I annually receive over 100 emails mostly coinciding with the Halloween season. Because of it's popularity I decided to post some simple plans online for fans to experiment with, and the results have been very cool! I do have intentions to create and possibly auction off an even more accurate costume replica, but that's for when I have time to play... The original costume designs use hand sewn polyurethane foam with a specialized painting technique (so as not to degrade the foam) as well as a custom carved head. The costume has been featured on ProtonCharging.com, GhostbustersFans.com, GhostbustersNews.com, as well having wide social-site popularity and frequent coverage in local publications.

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Puppet

For my largest puppet project, I developed an entirely new design process. Little Shop of Horrors is one of my favorite shows, and the puppets for the show are almost as important as the acting talent. With that in mind, I set about creating a process utilizing 3D design software which would allow me to show the director exactly what I wanted the puppets to look like, then create and shape those puppets from printed designs that would vastly reduce the time spent on guess & check work. As with all puppets, the designer must be thinking about how the final product will move during the entire creation process, and Audrey II here was truly a wonder to see in action!

Update: Since displaying my Audrey designs on this site, interest has peaked and I've created a number of similar Audrey Puppets for various productions.

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Sound

Obviously pictures have little to do with sound design, but the two you see here are of my audio invention, the "Touch To Sound Converter". The rig picks up the vibrations passing through a material using contact microphones, converts the pitch and volume information from that signal into MIDI information, then runs that out through a synthesizer program. Originally created for an advanced sound design class I was taking with Tony & Obie Award winning sound designer Robert Kaplowitz, the rig has yet to see full performance utilization, but has been used for a few demonstration installations. "Frustration" (the piece included here), is an audio concept created to instill in the listener the essence of what it means to be frustrated.

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Other

As I'm sure you've noticed by now, I practice quite the wide range of skill sets. Web design has been a useful tool for promotion, and I recently completed my first commissioned web design for PLB Signs. I have utilized Dreamweaver for HTML and CSS coding and have integrated a fair deal of Java (especially using the JQuery platform) and Flash (mostly for media playback). Basic artistic skills are important in the work I do and routine practice helps keep me sharp. On occasion these assorted artistic endeavors take on more than just the semblance of practice and become works for display or sale. "American Gothic AutoCAD" is a special piece to me as it was created during my time being introduced to the program and utilizes the idea of postmodern irony through the computed creation of an artistic classic. I very rarely limit the skills I am interested in learning and truly expect to have quite a body of work that cannot be categorized easily.