We heart zombies around here, don’t we? Oh yes, yes we do. We’ve been playing around a lot with special effects and makeup and jumped at the chance to check out the Mehron Zombie Premium Makeup Kit.
The kit itself comes with:
1 oz 3D Gel (For making fleshy messes)
2 oz. Color Cup Zombie Flesh
Bruise Ring (Premium cream makeup)
Colorset Powder (For creating a matte finish)
Powder Puff
Tooth FX in Nicotine Decay (That stuff’ll rot yer teeth out!)
Non-Latex Foam Sponge Applicators
Makeup Remover Pads
Cotton Tip Applicators
Most of this stuff is pretty basic and self explanatory, but I want to go over my experience. The second picture I have shows the face with JUST the Mehron kit, and to be honest I needed more blood. The second image shows my model with additional blood gel. By the way, if you’ve never tried applying gore to an 8 year old, I don’t recommend it unless your 8 year old is a seasoned professional, and of course you take EVERY precaution to ensure safety. Stay away from the eyes, ears, nose, mouth AND do patch tests for sensitive skin/allergies.
Now what I was most excited about in this kit was the 3D gel. It is essentially a mixture of glycerin and gelatin (and some other stabilizers and such) that arrives as a semi-solid in the bottle. You put the bottle in hot water to heat it up and essentially melt it for application. (Safety first, check temperature and don’t burn yourself!) Then you apply it wherever you’d like to have wounds, scraped up skin, and gashes of all sorts. I had absolutely no trouble molding it using just the tip of the bottle and my thumb, and it was very easy to work with. It has the delightfully gooey feel of a sticky wax before it cools. I want this stuff in bulk, although you can do a LOT with 1 ounce, I could see large peeling layers, body wounds and other fantastic applications. Then of course I got exited when I saw that you can buy an 8 oz SLAB of it on the site.
The only thing I didn’t like about the 3D gel was that the color doesn’t stick to it and blend in as well as I would like, it took a lot more work then was expected to try and get the coloring right in the areas “effected” by the tacky stuff. Oh well, at least my sponge didn’t stick.
The rest of the application was very basic, using the Zombie Flesh color cup as a base and the bruise ring for highlights and accents. The bruise ring consists of 5 colors. You get midnight sky (an inky black) Spanish Olive (a pea green that is slightly darker then the Zombie Flesh color) Maize Yellow (For oozing and contrast) and your two “blood” colors, Bloody rose (a lighter rosy red) and Burnt Maroon (a desperate, reaching wine color) the two blend together well for a bloody effect, but I like more oozing and dripping so of course I added my own.
Then you apply the Tooth FX to dry teeth with a brush, (which I did not use for this application, but did play with later) I like to dab it in areas you’d expect to see the most rot like by the gum-line and in the cracks. I found that if you paint it on and then smudge with a clean, non-linty cloth from the center of the tooth it gives a nice effect. It also works great for fingernails.
Then its on with the Colorset Powder, which is almost vital if your going for a realistic, fleshy feel. If you want moisture or tar man style effects, leave it out!
Cleanup was easy, I did my usual pro eye-makeup remover around the eyes, then soap and water for the rest of the face. I ignored the included makeup remover wipe completely as one is usually never enough to tackle my projects. I was expecting trouble with the 3D gel but thanks to the glycerin base it washes off quite nicely.
You can check them out on Mehron.com where you can find more pro tips.
The kit is also available on Amazon.com, and in costume shops all over.
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