Thriller Zombie Makeup

complete with maggots :D

Posted by Britta J.

About

I took part in Thrill The World in October last year, an event which had people all over the world simultaneously dancing to Thriller by Michael Jackson to raise money for the NSPCC. Of course the dress code was zombies :) Here's how to copy my make-up for your own zombie event!

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You Will Need (3 things)

  • medium and thin Paint Brushes
  • water-based Face Paint in black, white, green, red and yellow
  • Makeup Sponge

Steps (10 steps, 45 minutes)

  1. 1

    Start by removing any makeup and tying your hair out of the way

  2. 2

    Get a sponge and cover all but the bottom of your face in white paint. Don't do it too thoroughly around the eyes, as you can see in the next step it's going to be covered over anyway.

  3. 3

    Wash out the sponge and get some black paint on it. Cover your ears, chin and jawline including your bottom lip. Curve it around your cheekbones to keep the white skull shape. Dilute the black slightly and do around your eyes and eyelids, all the way up to your brow bone and down in ovals on your cheeks. Don't worry about being too overly neat, remember you are a rotting corpse and any messy bits or variations just add to the decaying look.

  4. 4

    Take a paint brush and paint black lines over your top lip to make teeth. Create little curves at the tops of your eye sockets to show the brow bone, and darken the area below your eyes with 'eye bags' to make it look like you have shrunken decaying skin there. Lovely.

  5. 5

    Gently dab some green onto areas of white skull to give it a 'rot' or 'moss' effect. Stipple a few black dots in the more mossy areas, just for added texture, and paint a few thin cracks on your skull above the eyes and down from the middle of the head. Discolouration is key as you're unlikely to have a perfectly clean white skull if like me you're still decomposing. I also carefully painted the insides of my lower lids red to make my eyes look bloody and demonic.

  6. 6

    Decide where you want the maggots to be. Good places are coming out of your eyes, nose and mouth, creeping down from your hairline, or just lying on your forehead. If I'd been clever and had a cut-out on my forehead showing a bit of brain I'd totally have had some maggots on that. you can either use a bit of water on a paintbrush to remove facepaint to create a clean surface for your maggots, or like me just load your brush with enough paint to cover over the other colours.

  7. 7

    Use a thin brush to paint black lines on the maggots all the way up their bodies, starting with little circles for their faces.

  8. 8

    Get a little yellow on your brush and subtly stipple a little extra texture on areas of your white skull. Bones naturally have lots of little holes all over their surface and aren't very white unless they're bleached, so this is what we're trying to imitate here.

  9. 9

    Use more diluted amounts of green and black paint on your sponge to colour your neck, chest and shoulders. This will continue the zombie illusion without getting paint rubbed off onto your clothes. you can see the effect in the picture below. Shake up your hair, all that crawling out of your coffin is bound to mess up the 'do a bit.

  10. 10

    Thrill the world! (or at least the past of it that's watching you)