Celebrity Skin.

Just finished the first phase of distressing my zombie costume (if a suit and shirt really qualifies as a "costume".)  I chopped one arm of the jacket off short, split the shoulder seam, ripped a pocket, tore up one of the pant legs, and judiciously smeared various areas with alizarin crimson, which I hope will dry down to a sufficiently russet blood-red.  I also did a diluted red which I poured down one leg from a tear in the pants, and soaked the right jacket cuff in the same diluted mix for the sake of variety.  We'll see how it looks tomorrow in what I expect to be muted daylight.

There's still some work to do. I need to tear the shirt sleeve off at the same approximate level as the jacket sleeve, but that will be fairly straightforward.  At least now the better part of the blood is finished, and that will be nice and dry for Friday.  The down side is that since I was doing all of this in the bathroom, my tub ended up looking like a serial killer had been at work.  (Perhaps a positive sign, under the circumstances.)

I've also been doing research into zombie skin.  To my surprise, people seem to feel that zombie skin is a lot lighter than I expected, at least in the case of Caucasian zombies.  (Zombies of other ethnic derivations tend to slope off toward a sort of dark slate colour, with a bluish tint.)  So I've done some minor tests with a white cream makeup base that I then colour with green, it doesn't look too bad, and I like the idea of contrasting the green hue with blood-red.  During my homeward commute, I also gave some thought to using hand lotion as pus - probably a good thing that I don't discuss these little brainstorms with the other people on the bus.

And the smiling blonde woman?  Ah.  Allow me to introduce Sheri Moon Zombie, Rob Zombie's wife - Mrs. Zombie, if you will.  Trust me, if you do a Google™ search for "zombie", eventually you say to yourself, "Okay, why does this woman keep showing up?  Milla Jovovich, I get that, no problem, but who is this Californian blonde type?"  Still, it's good to see that some women still adopt their husband's last name when they get married, I appreciate that sort of adherence to traditional values.

- Sid

Postscript: back from the gym, and the places where I used the diluted red looks too much like paint when they dry down.  Fortunately, I've got some time before Friday to fine-tune things.  I may either break into my actual fake blood, or perhaps see if baby oil darkens it down sufficiently to look gory again.  The good news is that the undiluted crimson looks not too bad, although different lighting may change my opinion.

P.S.  December 12. 2010:  I have no idea why - the title, perhaps? - but as with one or two previous entries this one has turned into an absolute spam magnet, and comments are now disabled for this posting.